We're Building Something Real And Something Strong
by Distilled Happiness
Summary: The message had been 'seen at 00:12'. He'd read her declaration almost as soon as she'd sent it … and he hadn't replied. Jac's eyes darted to the top of her phone screen. 09:36. It had been nine hours and twenty-four minutes and he'd not replied. Fuck. Holy shitting fuck.
1. Text

**Text**

 _Verb_

to send (someone) a text

* * *

It started simply because she'd spent the entire shift unable to think of a certain word.

In her defence it wasn't an English word she was trying to recall, not that it mattered to him. And it wasn't that she'd forgotten the word either; it was the expression on her face as she faltered and frowned, racking her brain, and the way she'd cursed so very colourfully when her memory drew up only a blank. _That_ was what had got him grinning like the fucking Cheshire Cat.

The continued frustration she displayed throughout the day over this absent word only served as an indication that he could rib her mercilessly about it. She was sure his teasing made the frustration all the worse – certain he was winding her up on purpose because he _knew_ it was just making her more irritated about the whole sodding thing. Cutting in whenever she paused for breath, asking if she needed his help in remembering what word to say next. Trailing half a step behind her, reeling off words and phrases as if he'd swallowed a dictionary during his lunch break… He refused to let up even as she was stalking across the damp carpark intent on getting home and as far away from him as she possibly could.

But of course – _of course_ – the word only, finally, came to her just as she climbed, exhausted, into bed. So she reached without thinking for her phone, plugged in and charging on her bedside table, and texted to him that irritating bundle of letters which had been haunting her all day. She knew full well that by the time morning came she would have forgotten it all over again and she was absolutely _not_ going to give him the satisfaction of mocking her about it for a second day.

Jac Naylor  
→ _Kintsugi  
_ → _that's what I meant_

He responded almost immediately. Her phone buzzing in her hand before she'd had a chance to put it down, filling her ears with that irksome tone she always meant to change but never did. The speed with which he'd replied led Jac to assume his troop of toe-rags were all safely and securely in their beds, no longer causing various local authorities to go into meltdown with their daily antics. All of which amused her a great deal more than she dared admit out loud. He was probably sitting in front of his 50" flat-screen ultra-HD TV, watching some crappy football match or something. Or in bed – watching TV. Fletch seemed the kind of person who would have a television in his bedroom.

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _gotta admit Naylor  
_ → _I'm seriously underwhelmed_

Jac Naylor  
→ _what the fuck were you expecting?_

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _cartwheels and spinning plates on a stick.  
_ → _A bit of fanfare y'know?_

Jac Naylor  
→ _for a single word in Japanese?_

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _well considering how much you hyped up the word today…_

Jac Naylor  
→ _screw you Fletcher. I did NOT hype up anything and you know it!_

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _I aim to please_  
→ _so it's just about fixing broken stuff  
_ → _with gold glue?_

Jac Naylor  
→ _something like that I think  
_ → _Sacha kept banging on about it the other day when he got back from his shrink. I had to google it because he wasn't making any sense_

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _I'm defo bringing this up at the Board meeting on Thursday  
_ → _it could be the new Holby speciality!  
_ → _rocked up to the ED with a broken arm? No problemo matey. We'll just pour in some gold glue there and you'll be good as new!_

Jac rolled her eyes to the expanse of her empty bedroom. But she couldn't deny the warmth blossoming in her chest; even when he'd spent the entire day grating on her every nerve, he still found a way to charm her. So, she informed him that she was going to sleep because he was an insufferable prat.

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _you really mean because you need all the beauty sleep you can get right?_

His text was accompanied by one of those silly winking emoji things. Just thinking the word 'emoji' made her shudder. But luckily a few weeks ago Jac had discovered that there existed a handy little 'emoji' that accurately and concisely told someone to _fuck off_ without having to say the words.

It was Mo who, quite by accident, introduced her to that particular emoticon. Since Jac had never really left behind her teenage mind-set of being a complete shit when the mood struck her, she'd deliberately sent Mo a text that would wind the other woman up – just for the hell of it. Just because she'd been bored. Needless to say, the middle-finger 'emoji' was now Jac's most – only – used emoticon.

* * *

A few evenings later Fletch texted whilst Jac was elbow deep in the task of making cheese and pickle sandwiches – she had Sacha to thank for that disgusting development in Emma's palate. The Moana (thank fuck they'd moved on from Frozen) lunchbox lay open on the counter beside her, and it rattled wildly as her phone, somehow having ended up beneath the plastic monstrosity that had cost her more than it really should, buzzed in that annoying alert tone.

It turned out that Fletch had forgotten to tell her that Serena had left a message with him about an inter-departmental meeting first thing in the morning. Snorting to herself, suspecting that he was looking for an excuse to strike up conversation in order to stave off the boredom of a night shift, Jac refused to indulge him. She replied, saying that Serena had rung her about it over two hours ago – just as she was wrestling a stubborn Emma into bed.

Because he really _had_ just been looking for an excuse to talk to her, Fletch suggested she try getting Emma into her pyjamas straight after dinner rather than just before bed. That way Jac might be able to avoid the tedious, yet exhausting, ordeal of getting her child to sleep every night. Apparently the act of getting pyjamas on when it was bed time caused her daughter to inexplicably become not tired. Or so the five-year-old claimed. Jac wasn't so convinced.

She wholeheartedly blamed Uncle Sacha's soft touch.

And his cheese and pickle sandwiches.

Twenty-four hours later – give or take – she texted Fletch to let him know how his suggestion had transpired. Better, she told him, but there was still room for improvement. Oh, and Sacha had now been permanently banned from participating in any way in the bedtime routine; Emma had him wrapped so neatly round her little finger that he caved to her very whim. Soft sad sap. Fletch rightly pointed out that she – and everyone – wouldn't have Sacha Levy the Human Hug Machine any other way.

* * *

Over the following weeks, Jac and Fletch didn't go a single night without participating in some form of idle chat over typed messages before they inevitably succumbed to the day's fatigue. Stories of their lives beyond the four walls of the hospital were traded more freely, secrets weren't guarded as closely, while titbits and hints were dropped without thought, revealing to the other, piece by piece, previously hidden ordeals from the dusty chapters of their pasts.

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _what do you mean you've NEVER made a blanket fort before?!_

Jac Naylor  
→ _well it's hardly among the requirements for being a top surgeon is it?  
_ → _What's the big deal anyway?_

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _what's the big deal?_  
→ _it were the best part of being a kid!  
_ → _reckon my lot would turn the entire front room into a permanent blanket for if I'd let them  
_ → _come on! you never hid under the blankets all day and read story books or watched TV or played all day when you were a kid? And then your mum would crawl underneath with a plate of biscuits or a freshly baked cupcake or two?_

Jac Naylor  
→ _my mother wasn't that kind of mother_

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _ah. Terrible cook?_

She hesitated before replying, unsure if she wanted to go down that road with him just yet; uncertain of his reaction if she did… But a bigger part of her than she cared to acknowledge wanted him to know. Wanted to share this part of her with him because he was so warm and kind and good, and he somehow made everything better. Perhaps if she told him this, if she opened this door and invited him inside, then it would become … bearable. Maybe.

Jac Naylor  
→ _terrible mother_

Jac waited, heart pounding. Three dots jumped up and down at the bottom left of her phone screen; sometimes they'd disappear completely for a few moments, only to suddenly reappear again. She guessed he was typing out a message, then changing his mind and deleting it again. Uncertain what to say. This was a bad idea. She wished she could take it back. If he tried to placate her, if he went for some cliché sympathy line, if he displayed even the _tiniest_ hint of pity … she might just hurl her phone out the bloody window.

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _good thing you don't take after her then init?_

If he were there in the room with her, she would have kissed him. As it was a choked laugh escaped her lips and she smiled like an idiot to her empty bedroom. Euphoria eased the wrench in her gut that his next text caused her.

→ _if you ever wanna talk about it…_

Jac Naylor  
→ _I know I know  
_ → _Occupational health is on the second floor_

Then, because she needed him to know just how much it meant to her that he understood. That he'd, somehow, realised the courage it had taken her to make that admission to him – without her having to explain it – she added:

→ _Thank you._

* * *

Indiscernibly, without either of them being aware of it happening, their texted conversations ceased belonging solely to the dark hours between work and bed. They began to bleed into the bright light of day where others could, if they were paying attention, natter and whisper among themselves about what they were observing. Talk which had rapidly spread throughout the hospital faster than a Californian wildfire. Although no one, not even the stubborn, oblivious, pair was sure exactly _what_ they were to each other.

 _Lovers,_ some people whispered. _Just friends_ , others insisted. _Everything,_ Henrik Hanssen thought as he stood in the line at Pulses behind a couple of gossiping student nurses who were on a Darwin placement. _They're everything to each other_. He smiled forlornly to himself and wondered what Roxanna would have made of it all – she'd rather liked Jac, he remembered. Hadn't been intimidated by the surgeon's fiery personality and ice cold exterior. And she'd let Fletch stay all night at Jac's bedside, tightly gripping her pale hand, when the CT surgeon had finally woken after collapsing in her office.

 _That's the kind of love that lasts,_ Roxanna had mused aloud, watching as Fletch nodded off in the chair, his hand still wrapped firmly around Jac's as though he were afraid that she would vanish the instant he let go. _Don't you think?_ Henrik hadn't really known what to say.

* * *

It started around mid-morning.

Quips and comments and easy conversation flowed like water through the digitalised medium of electronic communication. Yesterday it'd been while they were in their respective offices buried under mountains of accumulated paperwork, but today Fletch was trapped in a meeting with some of the other suits who ran the hospital. Which meant when she'd finished her paperwork, Jac was left to pace the quiet ward without his company. It became very apparent very quickly that she was in need of a distraction before she throttled the nearest junior doctor out of sheer boredom.

His phone hidden under the table as the Director of Research droned on, Fletch found the most ridiculous meme google could find at short notice. Double checking that his phone was on silent, he sent the image to her knowing he couldn't do anything else for another two and a half hours. Jac's reaction, he judged, would be anything between scathing contempt to complete and utter cluelessness, but either way the junior doctors would be safe for another day.

And he'd get a good laugh out of it.

Around lunchtime Jac's phone ceased being bombarded with irritating moving images and pictures with text super imposed over them as Fletch gladly announced his freedom. Unfortunately, before they could celebrate, a member of staff – probably Scary Sue from ITU – chose that moment to speak the word 'quiet' while still within range of hospital grounds. Texting her … well whatever Fletch was to her, texting him fell by the wayside after that as more pressing matters too precedence in her mind – theatre; various medical emergencies; her child being tossed out of school at three-thirty in the afternoon…

That evening, Hotel Naylor was punctuated, as it had been every evening for the past however many weeks, by the regular chirping of Jac's phone alerting her (and everyone else) to a new message from Fletch.

Sacha chose not to comment on the sudden increase in activity on Jac's phone compared to a few weeks ago. He also, wisely, said absolutely nothing about the fact that whenever a certain tall, dark-haired and bearded Director of Nursing texted, the noise emitting from his best friend's phone was very different to the noise it made whenever anyone else contacted her. A theory which had been niggling at him all week, and that he'd tested earlier in the evening by simply glancing over her shoulder as she answered a chirped alert. The name at the top of the screen told him all he needed to know.

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _he should have trusted that you had good reason to keep your mother away from Emma_

His satisfaction that his theory had been proven correct overshadowed his guilt at intruding on what was clearly an intimate conversation. Sacha was glad, however, that she'd finally found a partner she felt she could confide in. He hid his smile the next time her phone announced it had a text from Fletch, Jac's expression one of fond amusement as she typed out a reply, and when Sacha passed by her room a few hours latter as he padded to the bathroom, he swore he heard her phone chirp.

Jac Naylor  
→ _I've never told anyone that before._

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _not even Sacha?_

Jac Naylor  
→ _Sacha doesn't count_

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _your secrets are safe with me_

She surprised herself with her reply. _I know_. And she did. There was no part of her that doubted him. No part of her that didn't trust him completely and utterly and without reservation. Maybe it was because _he_ trusted her. Had absolute faith in her, and she _knew_ that. It wasn't just words and gestures; it was something real that went beyond anything that could be spoken.

What they had … it was different.

Eventually, their conversation dwindled as the evening wore on. The gaps between replies grew longer and time took on a surreal quality; like no time and all time had passed as exhaustion slowly won its daily battle. When her eyes could no longer remain open, Jac typed out a final message before she succumbed to slumber.

* * *

A few days later, Jac woke to her alarm blaring and four unread messages from her Director of Nursing.

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _you shoulda seen the other guy!  
_ → _where did you go?  
_ → _soooooo I'm guessing the great and powerful Jac Naylor has fallen asleep…  
_ → _See you tomorrow xx_

She still hadn't responded as she hurried her daughter and best friend out of the house at twenty-five minutes past eight. His final message played on her mind as Emma dragged her onto the playground to await the morning bell. She had thought about letting Sacha keep her company, but the suspicion that it would provide fodder for unfounded gossip – or worse, invite conversation – from the gaggle of mothers who gathered in judgmental clusters killed the invitation in her throat. Just as it did every morning. Sacha stayed in the car. To avoid the irritating small talk from the PTA mothers, Jac pulled out her phone and stared at the quartet of text messages she had awoken to, eyes fixed on those two letters that meant so much more than letters. She hardly heard what Sacha said as he pulled out of the school carpark twenty minutes later; still mulling over that 'xx'.

When she finally got to Darwin, she barely saw Fletch long enough to accept the coffee he pressed hurriedly into her hand before he dashed off. The course of his day already mapped out with nursing disaster after nursing disaster looming on the horizon, much as Hanssen loomed around corners and at the ends of long corridors. Her mind still elsewhere, Jac allowed Frieda to lead the ward round as she sipped her coffee and did her best to appear as though she was listening like a good teacher to whatever Frieda and Nicky were prattling about.

Luckily all it took was a loud shout from one of the nurses – _crash trolley! –_ to kick start her surgeon's brain into the correct gear. Leaving Frieda in charge of the ward, Jac rushed the patient straight through to theatre, forgoing any of the scans that had just been ordered. As she scrubbed up and the theatre team assembled around her in a fury of activity, she forced any lingering thought of Adrian Fletcher, and any thought of _kissing_ Adrian Fletcher, firmly out of her mind.

That she already knew what kissing him was like didn't help in the slightest.

Around midday, shortly after receiving a text from Sacha that she ignored, her phone chirped in her pocket announcing insistently and loudly that it had received another message. Jac ignored the knowing smirk from Frieda as she reached into her scrub pocket for the device, silently daring the registrar to make a comment about the two dissimilar alert tones. Frieda wisely chose to take interest in the blank screen of the nearest computer.

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _you ignoring me?_

Jac Naylor  
→ _yes.  
_ → _that's why I've spent my entire morning trying to keep Mrs Gilligan alive. only for the witch to die on me as soon as we got her out of theatre and into HDU_

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _You're in the wrong job you are  
_ → _could have made it as a comedian. Stand up – you'd of been sensational  
_ → _Mrs G's surgery was a last resort anyway. The risks were always going to be high & I'm sure you did all you could xx_

There it was again. That infuriating and confounding 'xx' … what did he mean by it? What was more, did she dare to reciprocate?

Jac Naylor  
→ _don't you have some crisis or other to avert?_

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _I'm waiting for the rep from the new nursing agency to show up  
_ → _the new CEO is pacing round the table. It sounds like a herd of elephants in here  
_ → _it's the sound of hope and the will to live being trampled into the carpet  
_ → _the agency bloke has probably been scared right off_

Jac Naylor  
→ _I'll tell Hanssen how much you're missing him_

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _you really should think about that career change_  
→ _Seriously. Stand up  
_ → _You'd make a mint  
_ → _more money than you'd know what to do with. Could even by your good mate Fletch a new car…_

Jac told him in highly impolite terms where, precisely, he could shove his hypothetical new car – making sure to tag 'xx' onto the end of the message.

* * *

Of course, all this daily tête à tête-ing was bound to have a downside eventually.

About a month or so after it had become a regular thing, Sacha and Jac devoured several bottles of the white wine they had bought earlier that evening from Tesco. It had been stacked near the tills with a big yellow sign saying, 'buy one get one free' and who were they to pass up such an opportunity? Emma was safely in bed, it was Friday evening, and neither had work the next day.

It was nearing midnight when Jac finally crawled into bed, the world a warm comfortable hum around her – so the decision that it was the perfect moment to have a conversation with Fletch made absolute sense … to her…

But his awe and amusement that she and Sacha had managed to devour three bottles of wine in an hour and half quickly turned to annoyance. It was evident that the consultant was far too lost to the copious amounts of alcohol in her system to hold a decent conversation. Besides, misspelled words and gobbledygook were quite difficult to translate at ten past midnight, and he highly doubted she even knew what it was she wanted to say to him anyway.

When she woke the next morning, it was to remember that she wasn't twenty-something anymore, and that hangovers were the actual stuff of living nightmares. Eternally grateful that it was her weekend off, Jac pulled the duvet over her head and groaned into her pillows. Light, quick footsteps on the landing, her bedroom door creaking open, an uncontrollable giggle; all announced the imminent arrival of Emma. The small child flung herself onto the bed in an annoying, yet somehow still endearing, bundle of energy and excitement. Jac could only smother another groan as her daughter flopped atop her and started burrowing her way beneath the covers.

Her phone buzzed somewhere in the bed but Jac wasn't inclined to begin searching for it. A moment later, Emma's face appeared in front of hers. She was clutching Jac's iPhone in her hands.

"Mummy! It's Auntie Mo!"

Jac groaned. Probably to check, for the eight hundredth time in two days, that she was picking Emma up at nine thirty for their day trip to some woods somewhere or something. Jac had only to hear the words 'take Emma out for the day' before she was immediately saying yes. As much as she adored her daughter, she valued any rare opportunity to spend a day to herself – and considering the pounding that was going on against her skull, it was a decision well made.

Especially when the doorbell rang in what felt like a heartbeat later.

Swallowing her oath, because she absolutely would not be the reason her five-year-old learned about such words, as well as the nausea that had arisen due to abruptly lurching out of bed, she urged Emma to get dressed – "warm clothes remember. The ones I got out for you yesterday. It'll be cold in the woods."

"I _know_ that Mummy! I'm not silly!"

Jac grabbed her dressing gown from the back of the door and hurried down the stairs, showing her arms through their sleeves as the doorbell rang for a second time. Sacha poked his head out of the kitchen, rumpled t0shirt and a pair of tartan boxer shorts, coffee pot in hand, hair on end, and squinted in confusion down the hall.

He looked as rough as she felt.

"How was the wine last night?" Mo asked as soon as Jac wrenched open the front door.

"What the hell are you talking about?" she snapped.

A strange half smile crossed Mo's face and through the splitting headache and mild nausea, a chilly dread began settling over her. They stood awkwardly for a few minutes, Jac screaming internally at all the implications of Mo's comment while Mo glanced over her shoulder to where her car was parked on the curb. Mr T waved merrily from the driver's seat. Then Emma bounded down the stairs and straight into Auntie Mo's arms. She had already put her trainers on and from the looks of it, _tried_ to brush her hair. Feeling slightly guilty, Jac took the hairbrush from the sideboard – left there for situations such as these – and ran it briefly through Emma's hair as the child squeezed her arms around Jac's middle.

She could feel Mo's eyes on her as she brushed out the knots. Feel the glee and the mirth and the silent judgement from her quasi-friend. Jac concentrated on pulling Emma's hair back into some semblance of a loose plait, only to be met with the problem of what she was going to use to secure the slap-dash hairstyle? In the end she used the hairband that had been digging into her wrist since she'd left theatre yesterday afternoon. What on earth was the woman on about? Did she have wine stains on her shirt? Did she reek of alcohol? _How_ had Mo known?

Yelling goodbye to Sacha, Emma hopped back outside to join her aunt, already resuming her excited chatter about their planned day ahead. Mo continued to hold Jac's questioning gaze; with a crooked grin she shrugged as she accepted Emma's coat and welly boots. "C'mon, it's basic stuff Naylor!" she teased easily as she took hold of Emma's impatiently outstretched hand. "We've been through this plenty of times! Never drink and dial – or text, I guess, in your case last night!"

The earth beneath Jac's feet vanished.

There was that awful, _awful,_ feeling of weightlessness. The kind gained from cresting a particularly steep hill when racing a mile or three over the speed limit. Or of being suspended, trapped, in a rickety roller coaster before a terrifying drop at the edge of a rundown seaside pier. Like her guts were trying to climb through her throat as the whole world fell away. That teetering moment just before the fall that was filled with the knowledge of what was to happen, and of being completely unable to stop it. Like watching a car crash in slow motion on some high-stakes TV drama.

Mo, who by now was well attuned to the subtle tells of Jac's rapid change in emotions, took her cue – and Emma – and backed away from the doorstep. "Derwood and I will give her dinner and drop her home around six?" Jac could only nod absently in agreement to the plans they'd made over a week ago. She watched, not really seeing, mind frantically trying to decipher the haze of impressions and scraps of memory from the previous evening as Emma clambered into the backseat of Mo's car beside little Hector. Jac watched until the cold air of late January had Sacha, now clad in his ugly paisley dressing gown, grumbling from the kitchen about the chill. She didn't hear what he said as she let the front door swing shut.

Her blood thick and cold like half-melted ice, Jac stumbled – staggered – up the stairs and across the landing. It was like the walls were closing in around her. Trapping her. Smothering her. Fumbling with the door handle, palms clammy and her head spinning, she wondered inf this was just the hangover from hell, or some part of her psyche screaming a warning. She was descending into panic, yet there was nothing she could gasp at to explain _why_. No memory from the previous evening surfacing to make sense of the feeling that her stomach was being physically dragged out of her body by a cold, wet, fist. Nothing but a vague, awful, terrifying suspicion that she'd done something incredibly, stupidly, _undeniably_ foolish…

Bursting into her bedroom, Jac yanked the duvet back from the bed. Pillows scattered to the corners of the room and the mattress was half ripped from its frame in the frantic hunt for a slim, hand-held device that would spell out her fate. Nimble fingers brushed against cool, smooth metal. Jac sank awkwardly to her knees. Cartilage cracking, back aching, hands shaking. She brushed her thumb over the circular indent, much as one would stroke the cheek of a sleeping lover in the dead of night, and her lungs expelled their contents.

There, displayed clear as crystal on her phone screen, were words that she couldn't take back. Words that she had dared not to speak because she knew they couldn't banish that deep-rooted fear of being unlovable to her core. Of being _incapable_ of loving to her core. A fear of all the other related matters that had to do with heart. Which, she knew, was ironic seeing as she was a renowned heart surgeon who knew the anatomy of that vital, life-giving muscle back-to-front and side-to-side and all ways it was possible to understand it. Except, perhaps, in the way that everyone else could.

Her fragile heart hammered against her ribs. A heart that was sutured together with thin strands of gold forged from the few relationships that he had, somehow, not turned to shit. Old wounds, barely healed, ached to her battered bones. White-hot blood raced through her veins and a shrill whistling echoed in her ears. Jac read and reread and read again the confession she'd made in her alcohol riddled state the night before…

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _well I'm off to sleep now. Goodnight xx_

Jac Naylor  
→ _I'm in love with you  
_ → _I'm so in love with you holy fuck_

For a long time she sat cradling her phone between her sweaty hands, staring at the screen. As if by sheer force of will she could erase those messages from existence.

He'd read it.

There was that ridiculous little tick beneath the blue bubble that meant the other person had read the message, and then a label to explain, in case people were inept or just plain stupid, that the message had been 'seen at 00:12' next to it.

He'd read her declaration almost as soon as she'd sent it … and he hadn't replied.

Jac's eyes darted to the top of her phone screen. 09:36.

It had been nine hours and twenty-four minutes and he'd not replied.

Fuck.

Holy shitting fuck.

* * *

By Sunday evening, Jac was seriously considering searching for openings in cardiothoracic departments in the southern hemisphere. So much so that Sacha had confiscated her laptop to prevent her doing just that. But Sacha seemed not to fully understand.

 _He hadn't replied._

And she didn't dare contact him until he had.

It was getting to the point where she was checking her phone, putting it down, only to pick it back up and check it again. Sacha's merciless teasing only served to, unintentionally, cause seeds of doubt to take root, riddling her with the kind of crippling anxiety that had sent her falling apart in Fletch's arms over a year ago now. It'd been that day – when Adrian Fletcher had held her for as long as she'd needed to be held, without judgement, without anything but a steady unrelenting assurance that he would stay until she asked him to go – that Jac had known he was far, _far_ , too good for her. she'd known she would only ruin him in the end. Yet she hadn't been able to stay away. He hadn't let her stay away…

Fletch wasn't at work on Monday.

* * *

A/N:

taken from Google -

Kintsugi (or kintsukuroi) is a Japanese method for repairing broken ceramics with a special lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum. The philosophy behind the technique is to recognise the history of the object and to visibly incorporate the repair into the new piece instead of disguising it


	2. Phone

**Phone**

 _Verb_

to contact someone by telephone

* * *

He rang at ten thirty-three pm.

Jac accepted the call with a speed that could only be described as eager desperation. Comfort flooded her veins. The knot in her bell, which had been screwing with her appetite all weekend, dissipated as it became clear that he wasn't going to abandon their little ritual over one, silly, drunken text. The tension that had caused her to snap at every colleague, every patient, and every traffic light eased from her shoulders as she put her phone against her ear. His name escaped her lips in a breathy sigh that was very nearly a moan.

" _Fletch."_

There was slight pause on his end, as if he wasn't quite what to make of the undeniable frantic relief in her voice. "Sorry I never got in touch," he began. "Me weekend was absolutely hectic." Wanting – _needing –_ only to hear his voice, Jac didn't say a thing. Simply listening to him prattling on and on was enough. "Mikey decided, as he was going t' bed _yesterday_ , t' tell me about a trip he had _t'day_. Then Evie announced she'd run out of skirts – which she blamed _me_ for 'cause apparently she can't put the wasnin' machine on no more."

Fletch paused, probably wondering if Jac was going to say something – because she _never_ missed an opportunity to poke fun at the lengths his kids went to make his life difficult – but she was content to keep letting the sound of his uninterrupted voice wash away her anxieties.

So, he ploughed on.

"And _then_ me dad brought Ella an' Theo home at, like, ten t' ten. All hyped up on sugar an' god knows what else from their day at the beach. Although _why_ he took 'em to the beach when it's barely February is beyond me…" he trailed off, muttering darkly to himself. "Oh!" he suddenly added, as if he hadn't already been describing Jac's idea of utter hell, "And me boiler packed up Saturday mornin'."

She hummed in sympathy.

"Yeah," he agreed. "Exactly. So I got t' spend me weekend chasin' plumbers who couldn't install a new one 'til this mornin'. I had the kids complainin' of being cold all weekend, and me dad…" he huffed heavily down the phone and Jac could _feel_ the accumulated stress of the past few days evaporating from his body. Could imagine the way he ran a hand through his hair and rubbed the back of his neck as he flopped down across his bed. Maybe he needed this conversation as much as she did.

"Sorry," he said again after a long pause. "I jus'…" he trailed off.

"Kids," she shrugged, not sure what else to say. "Either you love them or you hate them."

He groaned down the phone – which caused Jac's eyes to close and then corners of her mouth to tilt upwards. He was tired, he was stressed, and he was a bit pissed off, all of which made the subtle nuances of his city-boy lilt ever-so-slightly thicker than usual. It was a careless – or rather, carefree – way of speaking; unconcerned with other people's perceptions and judgements. Honest and real. Just like him.

So different from Joseph, who was always so right and so proper and spoke only the Queen's English – to the point that it'd made her feel that she had to be like that too. Different from Jonny's Scottish brogue that sometimes got so thick it made him sound angry. Many an argument had erupted simply because she'd misjudged his tone. Or Matteo, who had just been smug with it; deciding that he knew better than everyone else because he spoke two languages.

Well Jac was also fluent in two languages: English and Sarcasm.

Matteo had never quite understood that joke. Maybe that was why they had been doomed to fail from the start. That and the fact he stole her research. And lied about being married.

There was a rustling of bedsheets from the other end of the phone as Fletch shifted to a more comfortable position. "I didn't make it to work t'day 'cause I was waiting on that new boiler. But then me cooker exploded as I was making lunch so I had t' go get anew on before the kids got home otherwise when else would I have found the time an' … well I was just looking forward t' a nice quiet evening, y'know? But me kids all had other ideas when they got home – shoutin' and screamin' at each other and I couldn't tell ya what it was about." He sighed dispiritedly again. "Barely got t' see ya Friday."

Something within her stuttered at that. Something fluttered a fucking pirouette to the juddering of her heart skipping a beat. She didn't bother to try and hide the smile in her voice. Damn it, it was just so _easy_ to talk to him. Quite simply the most natural thing in all the world. "From what I heard; you were busy putting out fires across four departments."

He grunted. "The agency we use decided t' just…" he swore harshly under his breath. "Y'know, I don't really wanna talk about it 'cause it'll only piss me off an' I don't wanna be pissed off for our entire conversation. In fact, the reason I called was 'cause I needed t' hear your voice an' think about _anythin'_ other than me shitty weekend so–"

"Okay," she interrupted. He'd _needed_ to hear her voice… "So what _do_ you want to talk about?" He didn't know. The silence dragged on. That unanswered text she'd sent him Friday night – well, Saturday morning technically – began to weigh heavily on her mind. Emboldened by Fletch's own admission, Jac dared to bare her soul to him for the second time in four days. "I missed you today."

The change in his tone was immediate.

"Really?" he sounded like the cat who'd just got the fricking cream.

Jac shook her head, a small uneven chuckle escaping her lips. "Really. I…" she shrugged a shoulder and shifted further down her bed, pulling the duvet up to her chin as she switched her phone to the other ear. There was no feeling of discomfort or embarrassment; she wasn't ashamed to admit that he was a vital part of her day, and she wasn't worried about him knowing it either. It was several months too late for all that anyway. "I don't know … felt like there was something missing. I kept expecting to walk round the corner and bump into you, or look up from the nurses' station to see you charming the socks off Mrs Alwrite."

"Edna's back in?" he asked with a tinge of sadness. "I thought you'd fixed her for good last time?"

"I did!" she said it a bit louder than she'd intended.

"Alright, keep ya hair on! You'd of thought I'd just accused ya of plannin' the assassination of JFK!"

"I wasn't even _born_ when Kennedy was assassinated … unlike _someone."_

"Oi! I ain't that much older'n you y'know," but she could hear the mirth in his voice. It was bloody infectious.

"Ah, see, all those grey hairs tell a different story."

"Don't think I ain't figured you dyed yours blonde t' hide the grey better Naylor!"

Jac didn't really know what to say to that. Telling him the real reason she'd dyed it blonde would just ruin the entire mystery – and the betting pool was nearing £250. But she still couldn't figure out _why_ there was so much fuss about it, enough to warrant a betting pool that had been running for over six months. She'd simply picked the blonde dye off the shelf at Morrison's one day because there hadn't been any of her three preferred shades of red available. Not a single thought of her sister had crossed her mind. At least not until she glanced in the mirror once she'd finished and felt a stab of crippling grief in her chest that had sent her straight to the hair salon.

"Tell me 'bout Edna then," Fletch prompted and Jac jolted away from the tangent her mind had wandered down. "Why she back so soon?"

She shook her head to clear her thoughts. "She had a fall. The paramedics thought to bring her in just in case since she lives alone. Only Connie was running low on beds, so she asked if we had any room since Edna mentioned being my patient." Jac heard the floorboards creak outside her door as Sacha made his way to the bathroom and instinctively lowered her voice. Why the lumbering idiot didn't go before he went to bed was a mystery Jac doubted she'd ever solve. "Anyway," she murmured. "Short story is: Connie owes me a favour."

"I was startin' to worry," he admitted. "The thought of you lettin' another department offload ont' Darwin without there being _somethin'_ in it for ya…"

"I know where you live, Fletcher," she warned.

He laughed.

In the lull that followed, her drunken confession nagged insistently at her again. Niggling and worming at the remaining shreds of doubt that hadn't been chased away by the sound of his voice murmuring soothingly low in her ear. He clearly wasn't going to bring it up, so Jac decided to bite the metaphorical bullet.

"About the text I sent the other night–"

"How 'bout we don't delve too deep int' the business of _us?"_ he offered. "Feelings aside, it's complicated and I get that you've got your reasons for it being so – neither of us comes without a shed load of baggage after all. So maybe we jus' … stop tryin' t' pretend like it ain't complicated?"

"I can do that," she murmured.

"Cause you told me nothin' I hadn't already figured in that text," he continued.

Jac stopped breathing.

"But I know you only said it 'cause you had a glass too many with Sacha." She couldn't tell if he was disappointed or not. Couldn't tell if she _wanted_ him to be disappointed that her confession had been made under the influence of alcohol.

"Doesn't make it any less true," she whispered hoarsely.

"I know. I never said it didn't … but it makes things…"

"Complicated."

Fletch heaved yet another sigh down the phone, "Y'know," he murmured, "there are times I wish it weren't complicated – that you _weren't_ complicated … but the truth is I don't think I'd 'ave fallen for you so damn hard if you were anything else."

 _I like it_ , he'd whispered that day. _I like it a lot._

* * *

After that everything went back to how it was. Easy banter and constant communication throughout the day and into the evening until the kids were in bed. Then their chatting turned from stilted un-punctuated sentences to clandestine phone calls while the night closed in around them. Long talks conducted in low murmurs and extended pauses in an unspoken agreement to not disrupt sleeping children.

As she exited her daughter's room about a week later, after succumbing to the urge that all parents have; to make sure that bed bugs or monsters hidden in wardrobes hadn't spirited offspring away in the hour since the child was put to bed, Jac tugged her phone from her back pocket and fired a quick message to Fletch.

Jac Naylor  
→ _Emma asleep. Your lot?_

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _not yet xx  
_ → _is it still illegal to tranquilise your kids before 9 pm?_

Jac Naylor  
→ _yes xx_

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _spoil sport_

He bombarded her with a series of yellow faces with variously unhappy expressions. Jac merely rolled her eyes as she made her way into the kitchen to see about cobbling together something that resembled a meal. Sacha lounged against the kitchen counter nursing a cup of tea, ready to chop or stir or peel if Jac required it; her willing servant in this second dominion of hers. _Kitchen department's more my thing_ she'd once told Michael Spence, _it's the knives_.

Jac Naylor  
→ _should have kept it in your pants then Fletcher xx_

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _fuck you_

Jac Naylor  
→ _I'm a bit busy right now. Call me later and we'll talk xx_

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _don't go putting thoughts in me head that I know you ain't gonna follow through on_

Jac Naylor  
→ _just call me xx_

He was late calling.

Having spent the past half hour impatiently staring at the TV, not taking in the overrated drama that was unfolding in yesterday's episode of _EastEnders_ (that Sacha had made her record so he wouldn't miss), Jac accepted Fletch's call almost as soon as she felt the phone buzz by her elbow. She didn't see Sacha rolling his eyes as she got up from her spot beside him on the sofa, but the sound of the TV volume being turned up followed her out of the living room. "Kids immune to the tranquiliser darts, are they?" she teased. But it turned out that Fletch was still trying to do the parent thing.

"–Evie can you jus' go t' bed please? No, not in a sec – _now!"_ there was a pause, during which Jac assumed his eldest said something suitably teenager-y as she stomped up the stairs. Fletch groaned loudly. "A double night shift in the ED is easier than kids."

Jac smirked down the phone as she leant a shoulder against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. The sounds of Danny Dyer talking some crap filtered through the closed living room door. Sacha chuckled on cue. "You don't have to tell me that," she sank down on the bottom step. "Although, how you manage with four … one is more than enough for me."

"It's like she decided overnight that she was gonna grow up."

"Well … she will be fifteen in a few months Fletch."

"I was still a kid at her age."

"It's different for girls," Jac reasoned, wondering when she had become so comfortable dishing out parenting advice. It was only a short decent from here to the yummy-mummy brigade clustered around each other on the edges of the school playground. "Boys can still be prats at twenty. I should know. I dated a few of them at med school. Girls are expected to grow up sooner."

He grunted but said nothing. Jac found the muffled sound of the football game he was watching, and the occasional sniff as he suffered through the cold that he claimed he'd caught off Emma when she'd gone over to play with Theo the other day, oddly relaxing. She found herself imagining curling up beside him on the sofa of an evening. Him watching his shitty football while she read the latest edition of whichever medical journal she hadn't unsubscribed to that week. The kids upstairs asleep. Elliott's mutt dozing in the middle of the floor…

As if merely thinking about the mongrel was enough to summon him, the dog nosed his way out of the living room and padded over to her. After staring at her with his solemn face for a moment, he proceeded to flop down at the bottom of the stairs – right on top of Jac's feet. Absently, her mind still ambling down What If Lane, Jac ran her hand through Gary's thick fur. Emma adored him.

"It's just … I'm not ready for her t' grow up," Fletch confessed, breaking the comfortable silence and scattering Jac's thoughts like frail wisps of smoke.

"I know," and she did. She also knew all too well the difficulties of navigating adolescence without a mother; at least Evie had her dad. "But it's happening whether you want it to or not."

* * *

"Nah it'll be fun!" he insisted a fortnight later.

"It'll be hell. Literal, actual, hello on earth."

Fletch laughed easily down the phone. "C'mon Naylor. Live a little."

Jac muttered darkly under her breath as she flounced around her empty house. Bored. Completely and utterly bored out of her mind. Emma was away for the weekend with Mo – again. She suspected Mo was trying to compensate for Jonny's prolonged absence from his daughter's life, but Jac hadn't said anything because she appreciated that someone else realised that Emma needed some kind of a family beyond her and Gary the dog.

"I _am_ living!" she told Fletch.

"Oh yeah? Emma's off for the weekend with Mo, ain't she? And you ain't working."

"Your point, _Adrian?"_

"Got any plans?"

Jac huffed, outed. She'd already admitted to having nothing planned. In fact, she'd spent the whole of Thursday's and Friday's shifts making sure that everyone on Darwin knew she had the weekend off. From the hospital, from being a parent, from everything – and she was planning on doing precisely _nothing_. Problem was that by twenty past nine Saturday morning, Jac was absolutely bored rigid.

Her solution: ringing Fletch.

Who had promptly invited her to come with him and his older two kids to Alton Towers theme park the following day. Theo and Ella, being too young for thrill rides and overpriced fast food, were going to be spending the day with their Auntie Becks, apparently. Whoever the fuck that was.

"You opposed t' having a bit of fun?"

"Theme parks aren't _fun,"_ Jac protested. "They're … hell. On earth."

"So you'll come then?" he asked, full of excitement and mirth and the prospect of spending the entire say bullying her into enjoyment.

Gary the dog stared at her with his long face, doing a very good imitation of his former owner. Jac huffed through her nose. _"Fine._ I'll come."

* * *

A few evenings later, when Sacha wandered into the kitchen to pour them both a glass from the bottle they'd open the other day, Jac's phone – abandoned on the kitchen under the book Emma had brought home from school – chirped its merry text alert, announcing the arrival of a message from the Director of Nursing. Curiosity, and perhaps a fair amount of envy, couldn't prevent him from glancing at the screen to read the snap-shot of text super-imposed over a photo of Emma grinning widely as she strangled a rather resigned-looking Gary the dog.

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _my lot in bed. can I call?_

Sighing to himself and wondering if it would make him a bad friend if he turned her phone off – or hid it – Sacha took the two glasses and Jac's phone back into the front room. To his surprise, Jac didn't immediately call her he's-not-my-boyfriend-Levy-shut-the-hell-up. Instead, she typed out a quick message and then placed the device screen down on the arm of the sofa, smiling at him as he handed her the wine, asking if there was anything he wanted to do with Emma at the weekend.

When she disappeared to the loo some time later, Sacha seized upon his opportunity. Launching across the sofa, and nearly upsetting both glasses of wine, he snatched up her phone. adrenalin racing through his veins, conscious that Jac could return at any second, he held the device in his hands and wondered what the hell he was doing. He typed out the passcode that Emma had taught him shortly after he'd moved in – because she'd wanted to look at the photos on her mummy's phone – and opened up Jac's messaging app.

Jac Naylor  
→ _watching some sappy crap with Sacha. I'll call later xx_

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _how is he?  
_ → _What you watching?  
_ → _Xx_

Jac Naylor  
→ _4 weddings & a funeral. He wanted Notting Hill. I told him no fucking way. Julia roberts pisses me off. Much rather Devil Wears Prada  
_→ _actually no. I'd much rather Titanic but Sach always has to complain about historical inaccuracies for the first half hour. then he moves on to dissing Leo so 4 weddings it was. For his own safety  
_ → _he's worried about Essie xx_

Guilty, Sacha locked the phone and returned it to the arm of the sofa.

It wasn't as if Jac had given him cause to be jealous; not as if she and Fletch were actually _together_ together. Yet for whatever reason, reading Jac's words to the man she'd spent a year or more slowly falling in love with helped settle Sacha's black thoughts. Helped assure him that he still had – and always would have – a place and a part in her life.

Adrian Fletcher had better not break her heart, Sacha mused. His best friend deserved the moon on a string and if Fletch couldn't see that … well Sacha wasn't really one for threats but for Jac he was willing to make an exception. Of course, the more likely scenario was that Jac would break her own heart by inadvertently breaking Fletch's by reacting badly to some small or significant step forward in their relationship and out of habit, out of fear, out of an innate belief that she wasn't ever good enough, hitting the eject button.

Sacha just hoped that all this mutual pining amounted to something that was strong enough to withstand the inevitable fuckups Jac was liable to make if, and when, they transitioned from friends to something more. Because for whatever reason, Fletch _saw_ Jac – and Sacha knew that once someone saw beneath Jac's many, many masks, it was easy to see why she deserved the world. No, Adrian Fletcher wasn't the problem.

When Jac returned from the loo, Sacha casually announced that he was bored with _Four Wedding_ and would she mind if he put something else on? She complained horribly about Anne Hathaway throughout the duration of the new film, but he knew from expensive experience that was just her way of engaging. If Jac truly didn't like something, she'd not bother to comment. Or she'd just turn the TV off. Besides, Miranda Priestly might as well be her spirit animal and Jac was secretly a sucker for any film with Meryl Streep in it.

Later, as he stumbled blindly down the hall to the bathroom, cursing once again his bladder for forcing him out of bed a mere forty minutes after he'd gotten into it, he saw a golden light spilling from underneath Jac's bedroom door. He lingered, and after a moment heard the tell-tale hushed murmurings that all late-night phone calls were conducted in. He smiled to himself as he fumbled for the bathroom light, cursing again as the harsh glare temporarily blinded him.

* * *

She could hear Evie's muffled complaining as Fletch sought respite from his spawn one bright, but cold, Sunday afternoon in late February. "What is she prattling on about now?"

"Dunno. Something about how I'm always on the phone t' ya." Jac was about to vehemently protest that they weren't _always_ on the phone with each other, but the words died in her throat. "Yeah," he muttered. "I had nothin' to say t' her either."

Jac wandered into the living room to be met with an alarming sight. Her daughter was holding both Elliott's dog and Uncle Sacha hostage; high definition animated snowflakes were falling on the TV and the first few notes of the opening song began vibrating through the floorboards. Jac promptly turned right around. Nope. Not today. Kitchen it was.

"Where have you sought out sanctuary this time?" She asked, noting the time and deciding she might as well start making something for dinner.

"Garage."

"Not the loo?"

"Nah. They figured that one out the other day."

Just as she opened her mouth to retort something witty, a child squealed in delight. A piercing shriek that caused Jac to jump right out of her skin. "Shit! Fucking _Christ!"_

"Bloody hell!" Fletch cursed, "was that yours or one of mine?"

"Fucked if I know!"

"Anyone ever told ya you've got such a dirty mouth, Naylor?"

She grinned at the sink. "Elliott and Connie once banned me from theatre for a week because I kept swearing during surgery."

"You still do," Fletch informed her. "I hear ya. Mutterin' under your breath when things get slightly tricky an' you think no one can hear ya with all them machines beepin'. Ya know theatre is meant t' be a sterile environment, right? That dirty mouth of yours could cause an infection."

Jac snorted, not really surprised he'd noticed. They stood shoulder to shoulder for hours at a time multiple times a week; if anyone was going to hear her cussing away it was him. "Yeah, well. I'm betting good money you like my dirty mouth."

Crap.

She really ought to stop saying the first thing that came to mind.

A strangle sort of sound preceded Fletch's reply. "There you go – puttin' them thoughts in me head again."

Jac just laughed as she wrenched open the fridge.

* * *

At a quarter to three in the morning over a week later Jac was jolted out of sleep by her phone vibrating beneath her cheek. A muffled, overly cheery tune accompanied the buzzing and she shoved her hand beneath her pillow, searching blindly for the blasted thing. cracking open an eye, she answered the call with a curt, "Naylor," expecting it to be some work-related emergency. What other reason would there be for someone to ring her in the middle of the night? She covered her eyes with a hand against the afterimage of the bright screen and hope this could be resolved before sleep fully escaped her.

"Jaaaaaac!"

She instantly knew two things; it was Fletch, and he was drunk.

So, she groaned.

"Did I wake ya? I woke ya. I woke her! Shit. Sorry. Well no 'm not 'cause I want t' talk t' yous."

"Stag do went well I take it," she murmured. He laughed, and it brought a smile to her face in the dark of her bedroom.

"In th' taxi on me way home," he confirmed. "Oh, yeah, mate. That's th' one. Past Sainsburys an' then down by th' canal."

Jac fed him a few more directions to give to the driver – not trusting him in his incapacitated state to successfully guide the taxi through the winding roads of his newbuild estate. Knowing her luck, he'd call her again to say he was lost and either she'd have to get in the car to find him, or ring his dad. Neither option was appealing.

"So, why'd you call me?" she asked after double checking the driver knew where, exactly, to deposit her drunk DoN.

"Does a man need a reason t' call a beautiful woman?

"He does if he wants to remain in possession of his crown jewels."

"But I don't 'ave any – 'm not the bloody _queen!"_

She chuckled her breath. Fletch rumbled something she didn't quite hear, his words fumbling and slurring and melding together. Perhaps she should hang up now; this whole scenario was reminiscent of that time she'd pestered him with texts after drinking a bottle and half with Sacha. If she hung up, she could spare him any potential awkwardness.

But if she hung up, she wouldn't be able to make sure he got home in one piece.

"What do you want, Adrian?" she asked, interrupting his prattling about someone named Davy Keys who Jac suspected was the groom to be. She felt sorry for the poor woman who was going to become Mrs _Keys_.

She could hear him grin. "I want t' talk."

"About?" she supposed she ought to feel privileged or whatever that out of everyone on his contact list, she was the one he decided to drunk dial. She also supposed the sentiment would be more endearing if a) she wasn't fucking exhausted and b) they were sleeping together. She'd be willing to forgive him if there was the promise of sex to make up for it.

He made some non-comital noise. "I dunno … jus' want t' hear your voice I guess…"

"Well you can hear it tomorrow. At work. During the _day."_ Jesus Christ she could feel her voice catching in her throat, all scratchy as if she smoked 40 a day.

"You're cute an' sexy when you're grumpy."

"Fuck you." Her throat caught on the 'uck' and so the 'you' came out all breathy.

Fletch hummed. "So," he announced abruptly. "Me dad's a tosser."

Jac rolled her eyes. "What'd he do this time?"

"Jus' … _everythin'_ … like, he said he were gonna take the kids out last week, right?"

"Right."

"But then last sec he cancels 'cause like his _other_ family needs him or somethin'."

"It was the week before last," Jac informed him. "But please, _do_ go on."

"Why can't he jus' … why couldn't he 'ave…" Fletch trailed off, but Jac was all too familiar with the path his thoughts were leading him down. Knew all too well the despair and knowledge of not being _enough_ that haunted him. The unwarranted spite that was directed at the other family just because they had been enough, they had been chosen, when he hadn't been.

 _You and me – we're the same_. At the time his words had only confused and scared her; a prospect she hadn't been able to process because of all the other shit she was trying to ignore. _She_ was different now. "You have no idea how happy it makes me to know that you're just as fucked up as I am Adrian Fletcher."

"Like it when you use m'name," he confessed in a low voice that sent shivers down Jac's spine.

She licked her lips, throat suddenly dry. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," she could hear the gentle rumble of the taxi's engine as he shifted in his seat. "Say it again."

Slightly taken aback by the demand, Jac humoured him all the same. "Adrian." It was a nice name; suited him. She wondered why he didn't use it more. Perhaps she ought to – outside work, of course. Using it at work might suggest to others that they could use it too and Jac felt oddly possessive about who got to use Fletch's name.

He hummed, whether in affirmation of something the taxi driver asked or in response to hearing her use his name again she didn't know. "Jac?" he asked slowly, her name catching in his throat causing the 'ac' sound to elongate. "Jacqueliiiinne…"

"What, _Adrian?"_

"D'you like me?"

She snorted. "What kind of question is that?"

"D'you _like_ me?" he pressed.

Fucking hell. Why did he have to do this now?

"You know how I feel about you," she said quietly after a long moment. "But why should I say it again when you haven't given any indication that you're going to say it at all?" Fletch sucked in a heavy breath, sounding much like he'd just had a door slammed in his face. Or a fist punched into is gut.

Jac could hear his pout in his next words, could imagine the way his eyes widened as he stared into hers. A wheedling, boyish grin on his face that would make her heart tug and the corners of her lips twitch. "That's not fair. You're being unfair. She's being unfair!" he complained to the taxi driver. If the taxi driver replied Jac didn't hear it.

"I'm not going to argue with you about this," she began. "I think you–"

"Who said we're arguin'?"

"You're drunk and you're still pissed because your dad let you down – _again_ – by choosing his other family over you. I get it. _Believe me:_ I get it. But I'm not going to argue with you."

"Yous want me t' says it?" he asked as the taxi clattered over a road hump. "Is that it? Alright then I'll say it then. I–"

"Not like this," she interrupted firmly. "I don't want it like this."

She ought to have anticipated his reaction.

"Then how the fuck _do_ you want it? Fucks sake!" The line went dead.

He'd hung up.

Jac dropped her phone beside her and stared up at the dark ceiling, suddenly not at all tired. She should have just ended the call the instant she realised he was drunk. Sometimes it felt like she could only go so long without messing things up; without saying or doing everything she instantly regretted but could not take back.

She should've just let him say it. Let him say it and then told him to go to sleep and that they'd talk about it in the morning. If he even remembered. He was going to wake up with a hangover and pissed off, and not remember why and…

Jac buried her face in her hands and groaned to the empty expanse of her bedroom.


	3. Call

**Call**

 _Verb_

contact or attempt to contact (a person or number) by phone

* * *

It was ironic really. They'd been called into work because a Major Incident had been declared due to a seven car pileup on the ring road. Yet they found themselves stuck right in the middle of the four-mile tailback that had been caused by the very collision they were rushing to the hospital for. After a series of frantic calls, during which time they had managed to progress an entire car's length along the road, Hanssen reluctantly accepted that there was no way they were going to get anywhere near the hospital within the next three hours.

Jac knew she shouldn't be grateful for the ready-made excuse to avoid a certain someone.

Although, considering the way she'd been treating him lately … he was now avoiding her as much as she was avoiding him. Snapping at each other during work. Ignoring each other in the car park. Finding excuses to be anywhere but where the other was. Jac had even taken sanctuary on wards that weren't hers – Serena Campbell had been surprisingly understanding, especially when Donna mentioned in passing how well Fletch and that _Ange Godard_ appeared to be getting along on Keller. But when they _were_ forced to be in the same room for more than five minutes, such as during mandatory inter-departmental meetings, they had been taking their frustration, confusion, and a great many other things, out on one another.

Frieda had threatened to quit. Nicky had muttered under her breath yester day about reporting them to Hanssen … or snitching on them to Mo. Jac just vehemently cursed the day he waltzed onto her ward and introduced himself with that charming smile of his. Cursed also the way he'd noticed her the day he'd been faffing about doing anything and everything other than preparing for his DoN interview. Even in the middle of all his self-doubt and indecision, he'd still found a moment to glance up and _see_ her.

As if he had somehow developed the ability to read her mind – which, by this point in their friendship wasn't a totally impossible phenomenon since she could virtually read his – Sacha said, as casually as he was capable, "Fletch hasn't called or texted you in a while."

She smothered her groan and tried not to throttle the idiot beside her. Because fending off questions about her relationship status (or lack thereof) was exactly how she wanted to pass the time while they were stuck in this sodding traffic jam. She stamped down the guilt when she snapped at him. He deserved it. _"And?"_

Staring resolutely at the dent in the silver car in front of them, Jac didn't need to look at Sacha to know he was peering at her with something like resignation on his face. Good. He really ought to know by now what he was getting into with these types of conversations. There was a heavy pause, during which time Jac suspected he was weighing up the pros and cons of posing his next question to her. "Is everything … alright … between you two?"

"Fine. Why wouldn't it be?"

Normally that'd be the end of the conversation – normally Jac would choose that point to make a swift an unsubtle exit, and Sacha knew that all too well. But this hardly constituted as a normal situation, and he evidently decided it meant the perfect opportunity had arisen to broach a topic he'd clearly ben stewing over since she'd appeared in his office without explanation nearly two weeks ago. Jac glanced out her window and contemplated how deep the half frozen puddles were, how icy the blustering wind was, and how far it was to the hospital. Or home.

"Well," Sacha began slowly, "you two have been practically living out of each other's pockets for the past … however long it's been and–" Jac glared at him, wondering if the shitty shoes she used to walk Elliott's mutt when Sacha wouldn't, or Mikey couldn't, were in the boot. Unlikely. She had a nagging suspicion she'd chucked them out after the last time she'd let the dog drag her round the park for half an hour in the pouring rain.

"And _what?"_

Sacha gave her his 'you're snarking more than usual which is why I know there something is seriously bothering you' look. Jac rolled her eyes. Fine. He did have a point. She'd been a right cow since Thursday before last.

"Come on!" he urged, leaning over the hand-break and nudging her with his elbow. "It's not like we're going anywhere!" As if to prove his point, the Toyota on his right switched off its engine and the break-lights on the Ford Fiesta with the dent blinked out. All around them, cars and their occupants settled in for the long haul. "I'll put on my new and improved mixtape," he threatened.

"Oh, I threw that shit out weeks ago," Jac informed him with an unapologetic shrug.

"I know. That's why I got Dom to teach me how to make a playlist on my phone." He shifted in his seat, digging in his trouser pockets with his tongue between his teeth. "Aha! Here – see." Sacha tilted his phone toward her as the first few bars of _Come on Eileen_ started playing from it.

Jac threw her head back against the seat. She was going to murder Dominic Copeland. And then she was going to murder the idiot who caused this fucking accident that was both the reason they were stuck in traffic, and why they had even got into the car in the first place. And if that didn't improve her mood, she was going to murder Adrian bloody Fletcher for being so damn fucking _decent_ and _real_ and _honest_. So much so that she had been unable to do anything but fall irritatingly, hopelessly, effortlessly in love with him.

She was way beyond denying it now.

 _Come on Eileen_ was followed by some Queen, and then a bit of Bon Jovi. Starship were just declaring to the inside of Sacha's car that nothing was going to stop them when her finally got too much for him. "Talk to me!" he implored. "Jac _please."_

"Not while you've got that crap going."

Sacha turned the music down and looked at her expectantly. "I know you don't like admitting when something's wrong, but something _is_ wrong so … let me help. And I can't do that if you don't tell me what happened." She clenched her jaw and stared at the redundant tax-disc holder swimming in and out of focus on the bottom left corner of the windscreen. "You haven't gone this long without talking to him since … since you were on leave last year."

 _Since you were in a coma._

Jac breathed heavily through her nose and ignored the sudden, unexpected, tightening in the back of her throat. Fuck sake. She hated that something as stupid as not talking to Fletch could affect her so much. Hated that she was so afraid that things had been irreversible broken between them that she'd taken to barricading herself in her office. Trying to put off the inevitable conversation that would officially end whatever it was they had. And how could she even begin to explain all this to Sacha? Where would she even start?

But the ever-helpful Sacha threw her a bone. "How long has it been since you last spoke?"

"Twelve days." She replied shortly. Then cringed because how pathetic did that make her? Counting the days since they'd last talked.

"Jac…" she wanted to smother him with all that kindness lacing through his voice.

"Don't," she warned, fighting to keep her voice steady. "Just … _Don't."_

"What happened?"

She swallowed; mouth dry. What the hell. "He was drunk. And he called. We talked. He tried to tell me that he loves me, but I told him not to. Then he got angry and hung up. we've not spoken since. Happy now? Can we move on? Talk about the fucking weather or _something."_

"Why did you tell him not to say it?" Sacha asked quietly.

Jac shrugged a shoulder, absently tracing a line on the misted window despite telling Emma off for doing it yesterday. "Who wants to hear something that can only be said when alcohol has been consumed?"

"Sometimes we say things when we're drunk that we're afraid to say sober."

"Telling someone you love them shouldn't be something you're afraid to do." He smiled sadly when she looked up to meet his gaze.

"Are _you_ afraid to say it?"

She shrugged again. Was she? Or was she just not ready? Knowing that she loved him was different to telling him that she did – and a drunken text didn't count. Just as a drunken phone call wouldn't have counted. These sorts of confessions ought to be done in person. "Maybe … but that's not the point. Things are just … it's … complicated. I…" Jac shook her head. "He is the last person in the world that I want to ruin … and I _will_ ruin him, Sacha. Sooner or later."

Sacha grimaced.

" _What?"_

"I wish you could see that you're not that person anymore. You and Fletch – you just … you _fit."_

Before she could list the many, _many,_ reasons why his statement was so very wrong, Jac's phone blared from her coat pocket. Digging out the device, she glanced at the screen to see a name flashing up at her that filled her with both alarming dread and euphoric joy.

 _Adrian Fletcher_

She knew Sacha was watching her – knew that he could easily see who was calling. Jac's thumb hovered over the decline option for a moment. He'd not bothered to talk to her in nearly a fortnight, so why should she answer him now when it'd only be work related? But the thought of going for another second without talking to him was just abhorrent. The call connected as she put her phone to her ear.

Above the muffled echoes of heart-rate monitors and BP machines and the general hubbub of Darwin ward during a catastrophe, she heard a door shut. Silence. The only sound to reach through the speakers of her phone was of his rapid breathing and his footsteps as he paced agitatedly across whatever space he'd shut himself away in.

"Jac?" His voice was low, uncertain. Troubled. Something was wrong.

"I'm here," she murmured. And in those words, she found herself both seeking his forgiveness and offering her own. "Whatever it is, I'm here."

* * *

It was actually shocking how easily their relationship – Jac had no other word for it at this point; friendship didn't even begin to cover it anymore – could turn to tatters and then be instantly repaired in as little as five words.

"I'm an idiot; forgive me?" he said as soon as he saw that she had _finally_ made it to Darwin, withholding the patient file she was reaching for.

Jac just pried the file from his firm grip without meeting his eye. "Guess we're evens now?" she tried to joke instead. Because _of course_ she forgave him. She would always forgive him. He looked at her with a painful smile and she could see flickers and hints of the same fears and dreams across his face that she had. The ones that plagued her during sleepless nights. Taunted her. Haunted her. For a moment, just a moment, she wavered. Her head fell against his chest as her shoulders drooped; as if for a single instant the weight that they carried had become too much. It was exhausting. Constantly toeing this line that she had resolutely drawn into the sand all those months ago – and for what? Reasons that now felt more like excuses? Could she honestly say those reasons still even existed? That they even mattered?

"What are we doing, Fletch?"

"I don't know," he whispered, naked honesty wavering through his voice.

Frieda chose that moment to clear her throat very loudly and announce that the ED were paging for an emergency CT consult and should she go, or was Jac planning on doing her job now that she was finally here?

And just like that, everything returned to the way it should be; her phone chirped in her pocket before she'd even made it to the lifts.

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _having a takeaway with the kids later. Come cover? Xx_

Jac Naylor  
→ _I'll have to get Emma first xx_

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _we'll wait for you xx_

* * *

"Will y' come?" he asked a week later.

"I didn't even know the guy – and if I had, I wouldn't have _liked_ him."

"I know. But still. Will you come?"

Jac shrugged a shoulder, switching the phone to her other ear as she picked up Emma's discarded toys. "When is it?" she knew perfectly well when the funeral was – he'd spend the past three days making sure every one of his nurses who'd wished to go had the morning off to do so.

"Tomorrow at ten thirty. Look, I get it if ya don't wanna. I jus' … he was a kid, Jac. He was one of us."

"I know."

It had turned out that the patient Jac had hurried down to the ED for last week had been on of the four junior nurses who'd been hired a month earlier. Hired by Fletch. The nurse had been caught in the middle of the pile up and had been the last to be freed from the wreckages since his injuries had seemed only minor at the time. But alas … penetrating trauma to his upper right side and possible collapse of the left lung; he'd not survived surgery. Fletch, being the empathic sincere dolt that he was, had taken it personally. Not that Jac blamed him. It always felt like a defeat when they were unable to save one of their own; Roxanna … Raf … Jasmine … Arthur … Tara Lo … Penny Valentine … the list went ever on.

She was going to go; she'd made that decision as soon as he'd asked her for the seven thousandth time as she answered his call. But she just needed him to say it out loud first; needed to hear him acknowledge the real reason he wanted her to go with him. Maybe it was selfish of her, maybe it was unkind, but all the same, she needed to hear it. Because even though a drunken text message didn't count, and even though a drunken phone call wouldn't have counted either, she still felt slightly cheated that he'd not, in some form, said it to her yet.

"Jac … I need you."

She straightened, a heavy puff of air escaping her lungs while she turned to head upstairs. Already, she was mentally riffling through her wardrobe for suitable funeral attire. "Pick me up at ten?"

He rang her doorbell next morning at five to.

She ended up holding his hand throughout the entire ceremony. Fingers threaded through his, her grasp on him boarding on painful as she kept her gaze fixed upon the ostentatious stained-glass windows behind the alter. Fletch said nothing, just maintained his own firm grip. As though he too was pinning all his hopes on that single point of connection between them being enough to get them through it. Enough to smother the unexpected emotion burning deep inside. Prodded – stoked awake by the setting in which they found themselves and the clothes that they were wearing. The last funeral that she had been to had been her sister's. Roxanna's had been a private affair, and she'd been too ill to go to Raf's…

Afterwards, they found themselves in the pub. And between the many stories he shared with her about his best mate, Jac voiced the quiet regret she could never escape about her sister. He reached out and took her hand in his again then; like he knew that he was her grounding wire, her anchor, and that so long as he was holding her hand, she could face anything. She could face this. They spent the rest of the day in that pub, tucked away in a corner booth, talking and talking and just … talking.

It was easy. Talking to him. It was liberating.

* * *

"Why does your daughter have my phone number?" she demanded as soon as he answered her call on the Sunday evening after the funeral.

He winced. "Maybe 'cause I gave it to her?"

"Yeah. I got that part. _Why_ did you give it to her?"

"Just … y'know … in case."

"In case _what?"_

"I don't know!" he burst out. She blinked in confusion, unaware that she'd hit a nerve. Unaware that this was a nerve that could be hit. "In case somethin' happens and she can't get hold of me. Or if something 'appens and she don't wanna tell me 'bout it." Fletch groaned, his voice low and just a bit frustrated. "Maybe 'cause I trust you with me kids as much as you trusted me t' look after Emma if anythin' happened t' you all them times you went int' surgery last year."

Jac swallowed down the unexpected lump in her throat.

"Oh."

"Yeah." There was a heavy pause followed by a low grunt. "I jus' … she's grown' up, an' … and there's gonna be things she ain't gonna want t' tell me, an' I jus' thought–"

"That she might tell me," Jac finished.

"I need t' know she's always got someone she can turn to."

Jac bit her lip, understanding what he was saying and where he was coming from. But … "Why _me?"_

Fletch snorted. "She won't shut up 'bout ya. _Jac did this_ an' _Jac said that._ Drivin' me nuts!"

She grinned, a warmth blossoming in her chest. "Yeah, well. Now you know how it feels."

"Oi!"

She let her smile fade as she contemplated his request. "Okay."

"Okay?" he seemed surprised.

"Yes, okay. Just don't expect me to share _every_ detail of _every_ conversation that we have."

He started to say something, but Jac wasn't having any of it.

"The whole _point,"_ she interrupted, "is that she feels she can come to me about things she doesn't want to go to you with. If she thinks I'm telling you all those things without her permission, then she won't talk to me at all."

"Yeah, but–"

"Adrian," it felt odd to be saying his name, like it was breaking the rules or something. But his breath hitched slightly when she uttered it, so she said it again. "Adrian, I'm not going to let anything happen to her. If I need to tell you something, then I will… Trust me."

"I do," he said at once. "I absolutely do."

"Good. Alright then. Moving on?" There were other things she wanted to discuss with him – or rather, complain about to him, (namely a certain junior doctor he'd dubbed 'the Wolfe pup') but Fletch seemed to want to say more on the whole giving Evie her number thing, so Jac just groaned heavily down the phone. _"What?"_

"I kinda gave it t' Mikey too…"

She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Of course you fucking did."

* * *

"Did ya get me text?" he asked a few days later when Jac was emptying the dishwasher in order to avoid the latest nauseating episode of _EastEnders._ "I sent it when you was doin' your paperwork."

"What text?" he sent far too many for her to keep track of them all … mind she wasn't any better.

"The one 'bout lunch. Sayin' I couldn't make it."

Jac paused, a handful of clean forks in her fist. "Oh. Yeah … yeah I got it."

"Really? 'Cause you didn't reply."

She rolled her eyes, dumping the cutlery into the draw. "I know."

"Oh," he sounded a bit miffed. She could practically see him biting his lip as he thought about how he was gonna say what he wanted to say next. "I thought maybe you'd just opened the message an' jus' not read it. 'Cause it said you'd read it ... but you never replied."

Fuck damnit. Why didn't she think of that?

"So, why'd ya leave it?"

It was just a stupid text, what did it matter so much to him? But she knew it mattered because she'd never left one of his messages without some form of a response before that one. Even if was just a crappy yellow face emoji thing or a 'xx'. "Because," she murmured evasively.

"That ain't an answer," Fletch complained, "c'mon. 'Cause what?"

It was times like these that made her miss the days when he wouldn't push her – when he'd known her just that little bit less, and therefore was a great deal more careful with her. Now he knew when to push and how far to push and when she was about to cave. "Jac," he wheedled, "tell me whyyy!"

"Because you've got to stop doing _that!"_

"Doin' what?" he half laughed.

"Saying things that make me want to kiss you!"

She could hear him grin. Could hear him trying to supress his mirth – could picture the exact way in which his lips twisted into a smirk and how his eyes sparkled with glee. "Sayin' I weren't gonna make it for lunch made you wanna kiss me?"

How could she even begin to explain it? Explain that his text had made her whole fucking day. Because something as trivial as not being able to make lunch – which wasn't anything other than one of them buying their usual and depositing it on the other's desk – mattered to him. Enough for him to apologise for it even when she would have been too busy to notice. And that had made it matter to her. Had made her realise that it wasn't just the big things, but it was all the little ones too that she loved so very much about him.

"Yeah," she told him abruptly, almost defiantly. "Because you're a twat and I wouldn't have noticed you weren't there if you hadn't said anything … and anyone else _wouldn't_ have said something because so what? It's lunch. It doesn't matter. You were busy. So was I. Of course you bringing it up meant that I couldn't _not_ think about it and–" She shook her head, not really sure what else to say, or how to explain it to him when she couldn't even explain it to herself. "I don't know. Just … stop saying those kinds of things, okay?"

Stop being so considerate and kind and lovely and caring and fucking … _urgh!_

"Maybe you shouldn't of told me," he teased. "Cause now I'm just gonna wanna keep sayin' 'em."

"Fuck you."

"That can easily be arranged, darlin'."

"Stop it!" she snapped down the phone in frustration, shoving the dishwasher closed.

"Why?" he challenged abruptly, the lightness evaporating from his tone. Jac immediately feigned ignorance.

"Hmm?"

"You heard me," Fletch practically growled.

"Why what?" And yes, she was being difficult. Yes, she was making this harder for him. Yes, she knew full well that he'd been wanting to have this conversation for a while now. But she just wasn't ready for it. She doubted she'd ever be ready for it.

"Jac," he warned.

"Adrian."

He snorted and a somewhat tense silence filled the space between them. The muffled babble of the television in Fletch's living room and the extractor fan in Jac's kitchen, still whirring as it removed the lingering odours from Sacha's attempt at dinner, only making the silence louder. Only served add weight to the distance that was growing between them; he was teetering hopefully at the edge of that line whilst all she wished to do was run in the opposite direction.

"I don't want things to change," she confessed quietly, eventually, breaking the stillness. "And if we talk … then they will. They'll have to."

As true as her words were, they were also a blatant lie. She did want them to change – she wanted them to change so desperately that it was killing her. Eating away at her from the inside out. But fear held her in place; gripped her tightly in its greasy claws and she couldn't break free from it long enough to be brave enough to take that risk. Or even to _talk_ about taking that risk. He was willing, he was ready, he was brave. But she wasn't and she didn't think she ever would be. Things staying as they were, although confusing and frustrating, was as much as she knew she was capable of. This uncertain, undefined, unspoken middle ground they were stuck in … it was safer.

"I don't wanna be just your friend, Jac."

"I know … but I…"

"You're scared," he finished gently. Was she really that easy for him to read? Did he honestly know her that well? That he could just hear her voice and know what she was thinking – feeling?

"Aren't you?"

Fletch didn't respond, expelling a lungful of air down the phone instead. "Evie says she's headin' round yours after school t'morrow?"

It took a moment for her to process the change in conversation. "Yeah … she, um … wants help with some biology homework or something."

"No wonder she don't shut up 'bout ya."

The corners of her lips lifted, but the sentiment felt empty. He couldn't see her anyway; she had only the vacant kitchen and her distorted reflection on the ceramic hob to convince. "Yeah. I'm her favourite person."

* * *

Jac was in theatre Wednesday afternoon with Serena Campbell of all people when she realised just how screwed she was.

They were trying to see if old Mrs Taylor's heart would stop spasming long enough for Serena to repair the tear to the aorta and surrounding vessels, when Jac's phone blared its ringtone. Again. For the fourth time in less than three minutes. It rattled stubbornly on the shelf above the sinks, insistent in its need to be answered, and Serena reached the end of her tether.

"Oh, for goodness sake!" she burst out. "Doctor McKendrick, will you _please_ either answer the wretched thing, or bring it over here so Ms Naylor can!" Jac raised an eyebrow as Nicky, the only person in the room not doing anything at that moment, hurried over to fetch the ringing phone. "Oh don't give me that," Serena said in response to Jac's look. "As much as we may _like_ it to, the world doesn't just stop when we're in here you know. It could be important."

"If it was important, they'd page."

Nicky returned to her spot at Jac's shoulder and held out the blaring phone to her. _Unknown Caller_ flashed on the screen. Jac just gave her F2 a long, hard, look. "Oh! Right. Sorry!" she awkwardly slid the green icon across the screen and went to place it against Jac's ear, only to earn another glare from her mentor.

"Put it on speaker!" Nicky did, nearly dropping the thing in the process. "What?" Jac demanded of the thing.

"Hello? It's Ange Godard here, from Holby City Hospital. I've got your daughter here and–"

"You've – _what?"_ the words didn't make sense. They _couldn't_ make sense. It felt like she'd just been slammed into a brick wall; her entire body seized – even the blood in her veins stopped moving. Lungs screamed for air.

"She was in the park with some friends and – well I'll let her explain it, but–"

Jac shook her head, familiar sounds of theatre fading away. The open chest cavity swam in and out of focus as the room began to spin. She had to take several deep breaths to steady herself. "That's … impossible. She's at school, she's fi–"

"Well you know what teenage girls are like!" Ange Godard said lightly. "Bit of a handful at times."

"Teenage – _Evie?"_ her heart spluttered and juddered, thrumming with now redundant adrenalin. She was shocked to see her hands, hovering over the gaping hole in Mrs Taylor's chest, were shaking. Body and mind reeling from the confusion and the utter, utter dread.

"Yes … who did you think I was–"

"Doesn't matter." Jac interrupted, determinedly avoiding eye contact with everyone gathered in the room around her. "I'm in surgery. Put her on."

"You're–?" there was the muffled garble of speaking and Jac assumed Evie Fletcher (the little shit) was doing some fast talking. "Oh – alright. I didn't quite make the connection, sorry. Hang on…" the sound of faffing echoed through theatre as the phone exchanged hands. She could feel Serena Campbell looking at her with a barely concealed grin.

"Hi … mum…" Evie had the same wheedling tone that Fletch used whenever he annoyed her during surgery, or on the ward rounds. Or in general. Fuck damnit. These fletchers would be the absolute death of her.

"I swear to god if you don't call your father–"

"I can't!" Evie said at once. "He'd get angry. He's got that important meeting t'day about beds or staff or somethin'."

"Yeah, I know. By you can't just go around saying that I'm–"

"Why not?" the teenager challenged. Serena didn't even try to hide her snort of amusement. "You basically _are._ I mean you and dad have been together since, like, forever now anyway so it's not like I'm _actually_ properly lyin' about it or anythin' and–"

"We're not–" Jac tried, but her words were drowned out by the teenager's rapid spiel.

"…an' he said he's really busy t'day so _please_ don't call dad." There was something in Evie's voice, a panicking undercurrent, that made her hesitate, made her wonder; made her remember how alone and afraid and utterly motherless she'd been at fourteen, and how hard it was to ask for help.

 _Hi … mum…_

Jac closed her eyes and huffed through her nose. _"Fine._ I'll be there as soon as I'm finished. Good luck convincing Essie or Sacha or anyone on Keller to not call you dad when they find you there though. Is Ms Touchy Feely still there?"

"She said she was gonna leave us t' talk in private. I thought surgeons were really nosey? Grandad says you're all nosey as hell."

Jac rolled her eyes. "Well. It's the touchy feely unit isn't it? Look, just…" she floundered, wondering what the hell to say to Evie to at once reassure her, and yet get across her irritation over this disruption to her perfectly scheduled day. "Do you think you can stay out of trouble until I'm done?"

"Not like I can _go_ anywhere," Evie sulked. Jac nodded to Nicky to end the call.

"Mum?" Serena teased after a beat. Jac just threw her a death glare. She was never going to hear the end of this was she? "At least she felt she could come to you," the other surgeon reasoned conversationally as she continued to suture the aorta. As if it were a common occurrence for the daughter of her colleague's (Jac really needed to think of a word to explain what, precisely, Fletch was to her) to call during the middle of surgery in need of a pretend mother. "Whatever the reason for her being on Keller, and for not wanting Fletch to know just yet, she must have known she could trust you."

Jac didn't quite know what to say to that as she returned her attention back to their patient. After all, wasn't this the exact scenario that Fletch had been worried about when he'd given his two eldest her phone number for emergencies? But the room continued to spin; to throb to the rhythm of her still pounding heart. Her breathing echoed loudly in her ears. The anxiety that plagued every parent at the merest suggestion of their child being hurt still blazed through her veins. But Emma was fine. Emma was safe.

It wasn't Emma she was worried about.

She didn't know when it had happened, or why or how, but somewhere along the way she'd fallen for not just the one Fletcher, but the whole sodding lot of them.

Jac shook her head in disbelief. Or disgust. She wasn't sure which.

"Go on," Serena encouraged gently, already watching her when Jac looked up, unconsciously seeking assurance or advice on what to do. "I won't tell if you don't."

Nodding, Jac stepped away and circled round the table. Unable to just leave without setting the record straight, she turned to the room. "We're not–" Several sets of eyes tore away from the gaping chest or the various machines and fixed instead upon her. Jac's mouth went very dry. "We're _not_ … together. We're not." No one seemed at all convinced as they turned back to Mrs Taylor without a word. Serena's eyes sparkled though, and Jac just _knew_ this little interlude would be common knowledge by the end of the day. Fan-fucking-tastic.

"Page Petrenko," she snapped at the ODP's assistant as she shouldered open the door and began the process of wrenching off her theatre scrubs.

* * *

"Thanks for t'day," he said hours later as the night closed in.

She shrugged a tired shoulder. "Don't worry about it. Glad I could help." And she was. Even if Evie's predicament had meant she'd been unable to carry out two of her electives and had to miss the MDM she'd been trying to schedule for a week now. "How'd the surgery go? I assume it was just appendicitis in the end?"

"Yeah – nothin' sinister. Dom said it was all routine."

"Which is what you want."

"Yeah."

"What is it?" she asked softly.

She heard him shift restlessly in his bed, sheets rustling. "Dunno. Guess I jus' feel weird with her bein' there an' me here. Y'know."

"You've got the others to think about too."

"I know."

If anyone else had called her at ten to midnight after the day she'd had, only to speak no more than a handful of words to her she'd have hung up by now. But this was Fletch and his day had been arguably worse than hers. "Sacha's there," she assured him. "And Essie. If anything happens, they'll be the first ones to call." He made a noise and she rolled her eyes. "Now what?"

"It's jus' … I know what questions get asked when a teenage girl comes in with severe abdo pain."

Amusement lifted the corners of Jac's lips. "Yes, Adrian," she agreed. "Those awkward questions _were_ asked of your daughter."

"And?"

"And you're being overprotective. Leave her be."

"I'm allowed t' be," he sulked. "I'm her dad."

Jac shook her head, a tired grin on her face as she rolled onto her back, arm aching from holding her phone against her ear for so long. "She's not having sex, if that's what you're so worried about."

"No?" there was poorly concealed relief in his voice.

"No."

"How can y' be–?"

"If you'd seen her face when I asked, you'd be in no doubt about it either," she explained, still amused by the whole thing. "Embarrassed doesn't even _begin_ to cover it."

When it's Emma whose 'aving the kind of abdo pain that means a mad dash to the hospital, you'll–"

"Be just as much of a mess as you are right now," she finished. "I know. So why don't you save the 'I told you so' for then."

The implications of her words weren't lost on her. She really could see them still doing all this in ten years' time when, instead of Mikey and Evie causing all the mayhem, it was Emma and Theo. Ella seemed destined in life to cause as little mischief as she possibly could, a decision Jac thoroughly respected. It did, however, mean that on occasion she got overlooked by the others, which was why Jac decided, there and then as she floated between consciousness and unconsciousness, that she was going to take Ella to see that nauseating-looking new Disney film that was being advertised everywhere they went.

Somewhere beyond her window a car door slammed shut and a dog barked. For a moment she wondered if it was Gary, but the mutt was currently at the vet's because he'd trodden on a nail when Mikey took him out for a walk the other day. Kid had been full of remorse and guilt, not that it'd been his fault of course, and Jac hadn't the heart to send him on his way when he'd turned up on her doorstep in a wild panic barely five minutes after he'd left. She'd let him tag along to the vets with her and Emma and the bleeding dog and hadn't bothered to waste time correcting the vet when he assumed Mikey was her kid too. Neither he nor Emma had batted an eyelid about it either, both far too concerned with the dog.

Fletch was saying something. She'd just enough awareness to hum along in agreement when he paused for breath as slumber coaxed her into its warm embrace. And as she fell asleep to the sound of his voice murmuring through the phone resting on the pillow beside her, she thought, maybe, she might be able to do this after all.


	4. Video Chat

**Video Chat**

Video: _Noun_

the recording, reproducing, or broadcasting of moving visual images

Chat: _Verb_

an informal conversation

* * *

"I'm so sorry," she began as soon as he picked but, "but I don't think–"

Emma chose that moment to hurl the contents of her stomach all over Jac's top.

She swallowed down her urge to curse as she snatched up a dishcloth, juggling her sick daughter on her hip, a plastic mixing bowl, Sarah the Pig, and – for some inexplicable reason – a pair of unicorn wellies. Emma laid her feverish head against Jac's chest, small arms strangling in their hold, snivelling pathetically as all poorly children were wont to do. But instead of triggering the innate mothering instincts that made every parent drop the world in order to care for suffering offspring, the sounds tugging on the strings of her heart just caused Jac's already perilously high stress levels to rocket through the roof.

All of this whilst on the phone to the man who, at this point, may or may not essentially be her boyfriend (although boyfriend suggested a level of immaturity that she liked to think they had both long since outgrown) as she tried to explain why she was cancelling the plans they'd made for the weekend. Plans that they had been winding the kids up over for the past fortnight because there was, as he'd pointed out to her, nothing more endearing and joyful than a child's excitement and anticipation ahead of a surprise. Even Mikey and Evie had been swept up in all the mystery and expectation.

But a hundred things suddenly now all needed doing at once and Jac had no idea which she ought to be tackling first: sick child? Cancelling plans? Washing? Food? Shower? Disinfecting the entire house? Wine? Sleep? Shoving her head in the oven?

Sacha wordlessly took the phone from her, saving the expensive device from its otherwise inevitable death when Jac finally dropped it and effectively making her decision for her. He lifted it to his ear, hand flapping in her direction in a shoo-ing motion, urging her out of the bug infested kitchen as he dug around under the sink for the Dettol. As she trudged up the stairs with her whimpering, clingy, queasy child, the redundant sick bowl, Sarah the Pig and the acrid smell of vomit, she heard Sacha begin to explain to Fletch the situation that they had arrived home to. What had she done to deserve them?

The thought flittered out her mind as she pried Emma's arms from around her neck, coaxing her toward the bathtub. But Emma was unwilling, in her sickness, to release her death grip and since she was covered in vomit, smelled of vomit, and swore she could _taste_ vomit, Jac decided she might as well scramble in too. What the hell. If anything, the fact she was in the bath with Emma took the child's mind – for a few precious moments – off how miserable she felt. It'd been a good couple of years since they'd bathed together. Emma's eyes widened as she took in the lines and marks across Jac's body. The scar from the kidney transplant from hell, which had been extended when she'd had that ovarian cyst, and the line lower down where Emma had been cut out of her, had both long since turned white and pale. These marks Emma's eyes skipped straight over.

It was the dark, angry gash under her ribs, and the red marks down her back that drew her daughter's gaze like magnets. And as much as she hated them, as much as she loathed their very existence and the reminders that they left, Jac refused to let her daughter see them was wrong. As things to be hidden away and ashamed of.

A long two hours later she slumped onto her bed, unable to summon the energy needed to get dressed. If she didn't move her sheets would be damp and cold when she came to slip between them, and her hair an absolute nightmare come the morning. Four patients had puked all over her today, and then she got home to a child who decided that the insides of her guts looked better decorating the kitchen floor. And, naturally, as she'd settled Emma into bed after their bath, to top off her truly shitty day, the child had thrown up – again – all over the bed sheets. And Jac.

Just perfect.

Then there'd been the call from Hanssen – and she'd known it was Hanssen ringing because the other night in a fit of complete childishness she'd set his ringtone to the Imperial March from _Star Wars_ , and as a result it now blared insistently whenever the CEO called – which she'd ignored. Only for him to ring again, and again, and again. And then when that didn't work, the insufferable workaholic atop his ivory tower had rung Sacha, who'd not the balls to tell their boss to kindly _fuck off_ , and promptly passed the phone over to Jac while she was trying not to gag as she hosed off Emma in the shower.

Not until she was sure her daughter was asleep, and that Hanssen wasn't about to demand her immediate presence at the hospital, had she been able to slip into the shower herself and wash away the lingering smell of vomit. The water pressure keeping the steadily accumulating stress at bay for a blessed few minutes as she strove to regain something of an equilibrium. A feat which had become a delicate and increasingly difficult task in recent weeks. But she couldn't stay in the bathroom forever.

Rather than searching for pyjamas, Jac reached blindly for her phone in order to ring Fletch – only to remember that it was probably still downstairs. Yet, to get it would require pulling on some form of clothing because Sacha had firmly implemented an 'if I cannot walk around the house in just a towel then neither can you' rule shortly after he'd begun his residence at Hotel Naylor. Her eyes fell on her iPad, discarded under last month's medical journal on her bedside table.

She could iMessage him…

Grabbing the device, she powered the thing on and located the appropriate app. Her eyes nagged on the little camera icon in the corner of the screen and the only thing that went through her mind was how desperately she wanted to hear his voice. Needed to hear his voice.

"Don't worry 'bout t'morrow," were his first words to her as the screen flickered and his face came into grainy focus. He was in what she assumed was his bedroom; pillows propped against a black wood-slatted headboard and the glow of a lamp illuminating him from the left. Shadow and light playing on the contours of his face. Fuck he was beautiful. "Kids get sick," he smiled with a little half shrug. "My lot'll understand. We'll just do it another time."

Jac shook her head, shifting to ease the ache in her back and to clear the inappropriate musings from her mind. Ponderings on how unfair it was that he could be wearing nothing but a shitty t-shirt and, in her imagination, a pair of boxer briefs, be sat half hidden in shadow with his usually slicked-back hair in disarray and make her heart flutter like a teenage girl's. Her only consolation was that telepathy belonged to the realms of fiction.

His eyes darted downward, and she subconsciously checked that her towel hadn't indecently exposed her as she'd wriggled about in search for comfort. Not that she really cared – so tired of hiding and so, _so_ comfortable with him. He'd seen every side of her by this point anyway, and if the sight of her fresh out of surgery or on multiple death beds hadn't put him off… He was watching her through the screen. Just watching. His eyes, full of a thousand unspoken promises, captivating in their sincerity.

"You should just take yours," she murmured, double checking the neckline of her damp towel in an excuse to break eye contact. "It's not fair on them if you don't go. We've been winding them up about it for weeks."

"It ain't fair on Emma – an' you – if we go without ya," he countered easily. "Oy! Don't be givin' me that look."

"What look?"

"Your _'what the fuck do I do when people won't stop caring about me?'_ look." Jac glanced away, dry amusement flooding her veins. "Y'know what? Honestly?" Fletch's tone took on a note of seriousness that had her instantly returning her gaze to his.

After a moment's prolonged silence, she shrugged a shoulder to say, 'honestly what?' because how was she meant to know what went on in his mind? Telepathy was a non-existent ability.

"You need this trip more'n they do. So there ain't no way I'm goin' without ya."

"I don't–" she shook her head and sighed. What was the point? She did. She really, really did. A day with him and the kids far away from Holby and the hospital and anyone they worked with. Where the only thing she had to worry about was … well, nothing. Because he had it all planned out and she trusted without hesitation and she had really, really, _really_ needed this. "Thank you."

"You _never_ 'ave t' thank me."

It was difficult to remember what they were talking about while he was looking at her like that. She was acutely aware of the very little she had on, and for the first time in over a year, she felt the uncomfortable tinge of vulnerability settle across her shoulders. A feeling that she couldn't remember having whilst in his presence since before she had been shot. "I, erm," she cleared her throat. "I got a call from Hanssen a while ago. Right in the middle of Emma throwing up everywhere, actually, so that was … fun."

Fletch pulled a face. "What'd he want?"

"Terry Cooper's in the ED."

"Your super-duper-special case that you 'ave scheduled for Thursday an' which you've been stressin' and panickin' about for the past six weeks?"

"I haven't been–"

He gave her a look through the screen of her iPad that stilled any protest. Okay. Maybe he wasn't _completely_ wrong about her stressing. But panicking? Nope. No way had she been panicking. "Well it looks like I'm going to have to do his surgery tomorrow."

He shrugged a shoulder in a 'what can you do when it's the job?' sort of way. Then he narrowed his eyes, peering at her as he cocked his head to one side. "What else?" Unlike with their phone calls, there was no need for Jac to voice her confusion. A wry look coated his face as he elaborated. "What else is botherin' you?"

She shook her head. "Nothing. There's noth–"

Fletch snorted, causing a stab of heated resentment to flash briefly and irrationally through Jac's core. "Y'know that I know you well t' know when somethin's up with ya. It's half the reason t'morrow was happenin'. So why not do us both a favour and quit pretendin' like I don't know you inside an' out?"

"Adrian, I swear nothing's…" but she was too exhausted to try and figure him out tonight. "Whatever. You're a dick."

The corner of his mouth twitched. It took her a moment to realise why.

"Oh, _grow up!"_

"You said it!" he laughed, snickering like a school-boy in the back of class. "I mean, who even uses dick as an insult? No one over the age of, like, twelve that's for sure."

"Fuck you."

"See! Now, that's more like it." If she were braver, she would reach out and capture the mirth shining in his face – screen-shot it, or whatever Ella said it was called. Keep the grainy image forever so that if, _when,_ this thing they had fell to shit, she would always have proof that he'd once looked at her as though she was his entire world.

"Hey, earth t' Naylor?"

"Hmm?"

"Where'd ya go?"

She shook her head, returning his gentle smile. "Nowhere. Just thinking." She picked at a loose thread in her pillow. "Perhaps it's for the best things have worked out this way. I'd have had to bail by the looks of things."

"You save lives every day. You go int' work, and you save people," Fletch told her in the low voice that Jac simultaneously wished he didn't use and yet adored when he did because of the shivers it sent down her spine and the thoughts that tumbled straight into the gutter. "An' the kids know it. They'd of understood."

She ran her fingers through her damp, tangled hair. How the hell did he do that? Maybe he _could_ read her mind. "Why are we discussing some hypothetical that's not going to happen now?"

"Cause it matters t' ya." He murmured. "Cause you hate feelin' like you're letting 'em down."

When had talking about the kids become so inclusive? Had stopped being _your lot_ and _mine?_ Had just become _the_ kids, _them._ How long before _ours?_

Jac forced herself upright at that. The iPad jolted to the floor and Fletch's amusement was tinged slightly with concern. "Oy, oy! Was it somethin' I said?"

"No – I … um … it's Emma," she lied as she picked the tablet up. "Sorry."

The frown he gave her suggested he hadn't bought it. "Alright. G'night, Jac."

"Night, Adrian."

The screen closed in on itself, his face vanishing from view. She was left staring at the texts she'd sent him at the end of her shift, back when the world hadn't seemed quite so vast and hostile and entirely out to get her.

Jac Naylor  
→ _off home. Pick us up at 8.30? xx_

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _I'll do me best. Mikey and Ella ain't exactly rays of sunshine in the morning x  
_ → _don't forget your swimsuit – I suggest the skimpiest bikini you can find!  
_ → _ignore me. Wear whatever floats ya boat xx_

Jac Naylor  
→ _they're going to be unbearable when they realise where we're taking them  
_ → _see you tomorrow xx_

* * *

"…an' so I was thinkin'," the video call connecting had cut off the start of his sentence. Jac rolled her eyes as she wrenched open the dishwasher. A cloud of hot steam fogged her glasses making it impossible to see while she stuck her hand inside, blindly searching the top rack for her favourite glass. Her phone was propped against the fruit bowl and she really didn't know why she'd answered the stupid thing. Habit, she supposed. He had become a bloody habit.

"What do you want?"

"Someone fell outta bed on the wrong side this mornin'," he joked cheerily. She threw him a glare which only got him grinning wider. His eyes flickered, taking in her attire. "You gotta go in?"

"For fuck sake!" she snapped. "I was always going to have to go in, wasn't I? That was the _whole reason_ Hanssen called at whatever ridiculous hour it was last night!" Her hand shook as she pulled out the glass she was after.

"Bollocks," he said in what would have been sympathy if Jac hadn't been clinging to the last shreds of her sanity. "What 'appened?"

"Why do you even care?"

"It were just a question!" he said something she didn't catch. Her trembling extremity was causing as much water to spill out of the glass as the tap was pouring in. She watched the phenomenon with a detached curiosity, mildly aware of exactly where this was going to lead if she didn't get on top of things – and soon. Fuck damnit that what today was meant to be about! "Hey – at least _look_ at me. I know I ain't showered yet, but this ain't smellivision." He grumbled something about why bothering to video call if she wasn't interested and the glass slipped from her grip.

"Shut up! Just shut _up!"_

"Jac, jeeze, what's all this for? I was only mes–"

"Cooper arrested half an hour ago, okay?! So I've got to be in, well, _now_. But Sacha got called in at three this morning because one of his guinea pigs rolled into the ED with an infection. So _of-course_ he had to go in didn't he, because he basically bared his soul to a bunch of complete strangers to get that funding and Jonny is _otherwise engaged_ , apparently, with his stupid _fiancée_ and Emma is still feeling like crap warmed up and–"

"Alright," he soothed, "breathe. C'mon, y'know the drill." As much as his instructions to _breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth_ irritated the fuck out of her, she listened. She obeyed. If only because it was the sound of his voice that grounded her rather than the words that he used. Guided her to shore like the beam of a lighthouse. Calmed her down from this unwelcome, but somewhat not unexpected, bout of panic.

When she looked up at the small window which granted her a glimpse into his morning, heart pounding but lungs no longer struggling for air and a tangled know of marginally eased tension between her shoulders, he was already staring at her. Something like guilt glinting in his eyes. "Look," he began by way of apology, rubbing his jaw, "what I was callin' to say before I got distracted was; d'you want me to 'ave Emma? Bit short notice t' be gettin' a babysitter."

Words babbled on her tongue. "I – Adrian, I can't ask you to–"

"You're not asking. I'm offering."

She bit her lip. "She's sick," why was she saying that? He already knew that!

"I know how t' handle sick kids."

"She's clingy," Jac warned. Reaching into the sink for the abandoned glass felt like sticking her arm into a vat of syrup; the air heavy and dense, making her movements slow, jerky, clumsy. Fuck. She hadn't slept particularly well last night either – parental anxieties and all that jazz. Now this? "When she's sick she's clingy."

Fletch shrugged easily. "All kids are. It's fine. I'll dump her on the sofa with a blanket and the ol' saucepan I keep just for these situations. She and Theo an' Ella can have a Disney movie marathon day or somethin'. We'll look after her."

She was already nodding, eyes closed and forehead resting on the cool worktop. "Thank you." _I love you_.

"I'll leave now then. Be there in ten – less if I don't get any red lights. Don't worry about gettin' her dressed, jus' get what you need sorted an' I'll do the rest."

"You sure?"

He shook his head. Exasperation twisting his smile. "Why d'you always have t' do that?"

She propped her chin on her forearm, peering at him as he grabbed his keys and looked for shoes and a jacket. "Do what?"

"Give me a million chances to change me mind," Fletch explained absently, calling up to Evie to say he was popping out and she was in charge until he returned with Emma. "Like you keep expecting me t' back out. Like you think I'm being delusional an' any sec I'm gonna wake up."

She had no answer for him.

* * *

She'd hoped that she could just waltz onto Darwin, check over obs and assess the situation – maybe rebuke Hanssen and everyone else for being so melodramatically pre-emptive. Thought that she'd just have to book Terry Cooper in for bed rest until Thursday, and then swan off again. Get back to Emma and begin to salvage something of her weekend. But it turned out Terry really couldn't wait.

Jac snuck off the ward around mid-morning in order to seek five minutes to herself away from patients and staff and Zosia bloody March … or Self … or whatever she was calling herself these days. She sat perched with a numb bum on the back stairs, hoping no one found her because dear god if anyone caught her video calling him during the middle of her shift … the rumours were bad enough as they were. Fletch's face flickered and glitched before coming into sharp focus.

"She's fine," he said before Jac could open her mouth. "Still feelin' off, but I reckon she just 'ad something iffy for tea at after school club yesterday. Ain't been sick yet so I got me fingers crossed th' worst has passed. She's a little grumpy though, 'cause I'm starving her jus' to be on the safe side."

"Does she have Sarah?"

Fletch rolled his eyes, amused. "Course."

"What about her–?"

"Yellow blanket?" he finished. "She didn't let me near the door 'til I 'ad it in me hand."

Jac ran her fingers through her tangled hair. Good. Good. "I got when she was born," she murmured. "Gift from Sacha. Whenever she feels off, she wants it and she's an absolute nightmare if I cant find it."

"I get it, it's a comfort thing," he shrugged, and she just knew by the way he was side-eying her that whatever he said next was going to be utter bullshit. "I found it in ya underwear draw by the way. Got y'self a nice fancy collection there. I take it that red set's jus' for me?"

She snorted. Loud. Free. And it echoed in the empty stairwell, a welcoming release. This was why she'd called. Because even when she was having the worst time of it, he could pry a smile and a laugh from her and make her feel … he made her feel like it was all going to be okay. Somehow. "If you think your imagination can handle it, Adrian, then yeah. Sure. I got them _just_ for you."

His eyes sparkled with mischief.

* * *

Jac didn't intend to call him again. She really didn't. It was just that he'd sent her a photo shortly after lunch of Emma curled up with her head in Mikey's lap, his arm wrapped protectively around her shoulders as they sat on the sofa under a fluffy blanket, an array of soft toys around them, and Theo slouched on the floor by his brother's feet hugging an old saucepan and … well. A family was all she'd ever wanted for her daughter – all she'd ever wanted for herself – and for the life of her she couldn't think of a decent reason to explain why she was denying it to them both when it was right there in front of her.

Evie picked up. Weirdly.

"Dad!" she yelled over her shoulder toward the open door Jac could just make out. "Your girlfriend is on the phone. _Again!"_

"You answered just so that I'd have to hear you say that, didn't you?"

"You ain't denied it," Evie pointed out with a shit eating grin as Fletch came into view. "Hey!" the teenager complained when he yanked his phone out of her grip. "I was talkin'!"

"Talk on your own time," he said. The screen jolted and jittered as he walked out of the kitchen and down his hallway. "What's up?"

Jac settled back in her chair, legs propped up on her desk as she got comfortable. "She's taken your boys hostage then."

He laughed easily. "Oh she 'ad them wrapped round her little finger within five minutes of gettin' here. Mikey's such a sucker when one of them's sick. Hovering like a mother hen. Y'know he skived off school – _twice_ – when Evie 'ad her appendix out?

"Well he's got his father's heart, clearly," she shrugged. "I think it's sweet."

"Don't let him hear y' call him _sweet_ ," Fletch warned, but the rest of his sentence was interrupted by Nicky barging into Jac's office. Files spilling from her arms, stethoscope flapping wildly from a shoulder, already halfway through her sentence. "…and the CT for Mr Yadim has just come back. I thought you might want to–"

"Yadim is Zosia's patient," Jac said without looking away from her phone. "Go bother her."

"Yeah, but she's–"

"Is there an ETA on the tech for Cooper yet?"

Nicky spread her arms, nearly dropping the tablet with the scan Jac had no interest in. "There's a lane closed on the motorway, so traffic's backing up. Probably about six pm at the earliest, according to the latest update from the driver." She hunched in on herself, preparing for Jac's ire; a face to blame for yet another disruption to a series of meticulously calculated plans.

"I'd start runnin' if I were you Nicky," Fletch piped up before Jac could think of something suitably witty yet scathing to say. "Her fangs are out!"

"Oh, _shut up_ , Adrian!" the F2's eyes widened in confusion, and then in realisation as she noticed Jac's phone in her hand and the unimpressed look on the consultant's face.

Fletch grinned, fully intending to ignore her. "As y' can probably tell," he continued, voice louder because he had no idea where Nicky was in the room and wanted to make sure the junior surgeon could hear him, "Jac ain't in th' best of moods t'day." Miniature Mo didn't need telling twice; the office door swung shut to the sound of Jac muttering darkly under her breath.

"Stop slagging off the help," Fletch chided. "It ain't her fault."

She knew that. It was just easier to be pissed at Nicky than accept that there was nothing she could do until the equipment arrived. No point going home due to the risk of another cardiac arrest – or worse – because Terry wasn't remotely stable. She'd only probably have to turn around as soon as she got there (well, to Fletch's) if she did attempt to leave the hospital. Fucking hell almighty. At this rate it was going to be pushing eight at the very least before they could get Terry into theatre, and it was a four hour procedure – providing that there were no complications of course… Sacha was on-call tonight. She groaned, dragging a hand down her face. Jonny was _busy_.

As if he'd been reading her mind, Fletch broke the silence. "D'you want me t' have Emma t'night? If you're still waitin' on the tech to arrive, who knows how long it'll be 'til you're done?"

"You don't have to. I can arrange–"

"Jac," he warned, that exasperated smile back on his face.

She shook her head, as small smile creeping across her lips. "Okay. Yeah … yes. Please."

* * *

She could feel it skulking under the surface as she slammed the front door behind her. Hot prickling tears stinging behind her eyes. Loitering, waiting, for that one thing – that one stupid little thing – that would unleash them. Shadows loomed like distorted ghouls in the hallway, shapeless demons reaching out for her with the names of all those she had failed echoing in the loud silence. She stalked toward the kitchen fully intent on taking a leaf out of Serena Campbell's book. Maybe that would shut the monsters up.

Jac yanked open the fridge. Light tumbled out, illuminating chrome-finished appliances in a faint off-white glow. The lingering odour of disinfectant still permeated the room, masking the musky scent of now stale vomit. Alas, there was no wine to be found. She braced her hands against the bottom shelf, head hanging between shoulders, arms straining. God damnit! She slammed the fridge shut. Well perhaps it was for the best she reflected as she pressed her head against the door. She didn't need alcoholism on top of everything else.

It was still lurking in the back of her mind as she traipsed up the stairs and crawled onto her bed; dancing hand in hand with all the other doubts and fears and regrets buried deep within her heart. A great writhing messy mass of confusion and contradiction – what was she to do when the one thing she so desperately wanted was the one thing that terrified her the most?

The fact that it was only just gone eleven probably told him all he needed to know. Maybe that's why he didn't ask how the surgery had gone, or what time she was planning to go into work the next morning. He knew there would be no point. She sat with her back against her headboard in the darkness of her room, still in her coat, still with her shoes on. Knees tight against her chest and the soft glow of the lamp providing just enough light for the front-facing camera to focus on her image.

Fletch didn't say a thing. He merely lay on his side, his own phone probably propped against pillows or something, watching her through his screen. Waiting. Eyes grey in the dinge, but bright. Comforting. A sort of sympathetic, yet not pitying, never pitying, expression on his face. All she could hear was her own heart pounding and his steady breaths, faint through the speakers on her phone.

"I couldn't fix him," she said at last. Voice low, shaky, small. A heaving shudder raked through her body – head to toe – setting a quiver through every bone, every muscle, every molecule and fibre. Ghoulish fingers wedged between the cracks that followed, jerking wide with cruel uncaring abandon. "And it's stupid. It's pathetic! Fixing people is what I do. It's why I became a doctor in the first place. Fixing other people is easier than figuring out how to fix myself and–"

"You don't need t' be fixed," Fletch interrupted firmly, quietly. His gaze so piercing, so _knowing_ , that it stripped her bare. "There ain't nothin' wrong with you."

And that was all it took.

Silent tears that just _wouldn't stop_. That had her shoulders shaking, trembling, caving, until her head buried itself in the crook of an elbow. Muffled sobs echoing through the dark, empty house. She clutched tightly, desperately, to the lifeline in the palm of her left hand. All Fletch could see was Jac's bedroom ceiling bathed in faint yellow light. All he could hear were the gentle, gut-wrenching sounds of her tears – because she'd probably grown up knowing that if she was going to cry, she had to do it quietly; that she had to sob into her pillow during the dead of night because no one was going to come for her. All he could do was wait. Watch.

Wishing he were there with her.

"Why are you always with me when I fall apart?" she asked some time later when she had kicked off her shoes and shrugged off her coat and her tears had dried on her cheeks. When she was cradling her phone between her clammy hands and staring at him, wishing that she could fall through the screen and into his arms. Into him.

Fletch rubbed the back of his neck as he shrugged. "Dunno. I guess … 'cause maybe you feel safe when you're with me? Safe enough t' let it all out. 'Cause you know I ain't ever gonna hurt you and I ain't ever gonna let anyone else either. 'Cause you trust me t' keep you safe when you're afraid."

 _I love you. I fucking love you. I love you so fucking much and it's terrifying me_. "You're such a sap," she choked out weakly.

"You love it."

He was staring at her again, and somehow, she knew that he could quite happily spend the rest of his life gazing at her like he was. Because she could happily spend the rest of hers looking at him. And for a few moments she was able to forget they weren't in the same room. She could imagine what it'd be like to lay in bed beside him. With him. Could see the way his forehead crinkled and the way his mouth twitched and the sprinkling of grey in his beard. She wanted to reach out and trace a finger over the lines around his eyes, across his forehead, the corners of his lips. Wanted to feel the rise and fall of his chest beneath her palms, his breath on her neck, warm hands a heavy weight on her hips…

" _What d'you think you're doin'?"_ he demanded suddenly, abruptly, eyes narrowing. Jac recoiled, thrown for a wild moment. What the–? Those musings had been internal, hadn't they? She'd not voiced them, had kept them as always locked deep within herself … hadn't she? Shit. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck – oh … wait… Jac cursed internally as she realised that he wasn't addressing her, but someone else; his stern gaze focused on a spot _behind_ her, behind his phone. No doubt one of his erratic offspring was about to be in some deep shit.

"Who is you talking to?" and Jac's heart throbbed in instinctual recognition.

Fletch broke into a tender smile, glancing at his phone. "Why don't ya come up her an' find out?"

A heartbeat later a face she knew better than her own filled her screen. "Mummy!"

"Hey, baby," she whispered, hoping the lighting was too dim for Emma to notice that she'd been crying. Her child was annoyingly astute at times. "You feeling better?"

Emma shrugged a small shoulder. "Little bit." She twisted and turned to Fletch. "I'm hungry."

"You can have somethin' in the mornin'," he promised. "I know it sucks, but we gotta be sure you're not gonna be poorly again, don't we?" Jac couldn't see Emma's expression as she contemplated his reasoning; abruptly the little girl lurched forward and wrapped her skinny arms round his neck.

There was a wonderous smile on Fletch's face as he hugged her back; then his gaze was swiftly drawn toward a second disturbance by his bedroom door. "Theo," he murmured, resignation tinged with exasperation coating his sigh. "Go back t' bed mate."

"Is Emma all alright?" Jac heard the little boy ask.

At the sound of her name, Emma lifted her head to look in Theo's direction. "Yeah, she's fine mate," Fletch assured his youngest. "Aren't you?" Emma nodded, wide eyes flicking back to the phone where her mother's image was displayed.

"Try to go back to sleep baby," Jac told her as Theo clambered up onto Fletch's bed.

She nodded, already rubbing her eyes. "Alright. N'night mummy. I loves you."

"Love you too," Jac whispered as she watched her daughter worm her way under the duvet beside her bestest friend in the whole wide world. Eyes drifting shut and her breathing deepening, calming, steadying to match the same rhythm as Theo's. Peaceful. Happy. Safe. "You're in the wrong bed, Naylor," Jac mumbled faintly to herself, watching as Theo draped a small arm around Emma, the pair of them snuggling up, already dead to the world, against

Then what she'd just said – and more importantly, that she'd said it _out loud_ – hit her. Oh god … oh god oh god oh god…

Fletch cleared his throat, a hand subconsciously reaching out to the children. He fixed her with an unblinking gaze. His words a dare – a challenge. "Yeah. Yeah you are."

And there it was. That thing they had been avoiding since this whole ritual had begun.


	5. Voicemail part one

**Voicemail [part one]**

 _noun_

a centralised electronic system which can store messages from telephone callers

* * *

Naturally, she ran.

It was her default setting after all. When faced with something that involved feelings and emotions and, especially, intimacy, she ran. Far easier to avoid whatever it was and not deal with it than face it. Easier to ignore it altogether in the hopes it just _went away_.

Sunday morning she'd rung Sacha as he was leaving the hospital and begged – she'd actually, properly, truly _begged_ – him to pick up Emma on his way home so that she wouldn't have to see Fletch. Sacha's only condition was that she told him exactly what had happened, rather than stewing on it for two weeks while it festered and putrefied – and that she made his favourite chicken and bacon tagliatelle for lunch.

Jac suspected he'd already gotten Fletch's side of the story when he picked Emma up, which was probably why his advice, for once, was far from helpful. "Well," he said with a shrug, tipping out the entire packet of bacon for Jac to dice, despite her repeatedly stating that the recipe didn't require didn't require nearly half that amount, "you can't move in with him until I'm ready to move out of here, alright?" Emma wandered into the kitchen just at that moment, forcing Jac to swallow the milk-curdling cursing she'd been about to hurl at her buffoon of a best friend.

"Or – you know," he continued half an hour later through a mouthful of pasta as the three of them sat around the table, "you could try this thing called _talking."_ Unperturbed by Jac's raised eyebrow, he went on. "See, it's the latest craze – all the kids are doing it – where you actually communicate to someone what you're thinking and feeling. Making for a healthy relationship."

Jac didn't respond, just snatched away his empty plate with her usual passive aggressive hostility. Sacha surveyed her over the rim of his steaming mug of tea, eyes narrowing in dawning suspicion. "You're going to hide out here until it goes away, aren't you?"

"Oh yes."

* * *

Now, the best thing about Fletch – and, also, simultaneously, arguably, the worst thing about him – was how well he knew her. Which was why on Wednesday morning, when she _finally_ dared show her face at the hospital, he didn't comment on her absence. Didn't say a thing about the lack of texts, the unanswered phone calls, and the ignored video chats. In fact, he acted as if their late night conversation Saturday into Sunday hadn't ended with him firmly announcing that she was in the wrong bed, and as if she hadn't responded to that statement by 'accidentally' ending the call.

And then hurling her phone at her bedroom wall when he promptly rang back.

She'd had to find a reputable place to get it fixed yesterday because tiny shards of glass kept falling out of the shattered screen. The last thing she needed was herself or Emma getting a miniscule glass splinter imbedded in a finger or a thumb. Cost a fricking arm and a leg mind, and the pimply idiot who'd served her had the nerve to try and ask for her number. Twat. Jac had informed him she was married, only for the smug bastard to point out that she wasn't wearing a ring. She'd just told him to hurry the fuck up with the repair and stormed off to fuel her irritation with caffeine at the nearby coffee shop. The asshat had still tried to get her number when she returned an hour later for the device that was essentially her lifeline.

"Penny for ya thoughts?" Fletch asked, falling into step beside her as soon as she strode out of the lift and entered the familiar bustle of Darwin.

"Hmm?"

"You're a million miles away."

Jac just shook her head. "Broke my phone. Git who fixed it yesterday is still pissing me off."

"Ah," he said delicately. "What'd he do t' still be pissin' you off t'day?"

"Kept asking for my number." When Fletch didn't respond she glanced at him and a warmth blossomed in her stomach when she spotted his jaw clenching.

"Yeah, well," he ran a hand through his hair, an attempt to hide his agitation – but she knew him well enough to still notice it. A little envy never hurt anyone. "Speaking of twats askin' for ya number, there's some bloke from a London Hospital been tryin' t' get hold of you."

"Who?"

"Dunno. Didn't ask." Well that told her enough about what he thought about her mystery caller. "Think it's t' do with a patient referral or somethin'. He asked for your mobile. But I told him t' leave a number for his office and that you'd call back."

"Getting territorial in your old age, Fletcher?"

"You got a problem with that?" he demanded, halting outside the locker room. Nope. Not at all. But she wasn't prepared to admit it when it was still so early in the day. He'd harp on about it until the sun went down if she did. Besides, his tone reminded her of his declaration Saturday evening, and she wasn't prepared to risk veering down that lane anytime soon either. Luckily in this instance silence spoke louder than words and the smirk that he hid in his beard eased the small prickling of tension that had grown between them.

She shook her head, eyes rolling in their sockets, planning to call back that London consultant as soon as she made it to her office – just to wind him up further. "Oh 'ang on," Fletch added as she turned away, fingers tugging on the material of her jacket before she could disappear, "nearly forgot. I got somethin' for ya."

Jac eyed him suspiciously. "What?"

He gave her a winning smile as he held out a hand expectantly. It took her a second or two to realise he was waiting for one of hers. Still wary, Jac placed her hand in his. Instantly strong fingers wrapped loosely around her wrist. A warm imitation of a shackle; oddly comforting, as opposed to restricting. She knew she could pull back at any moment and be met with no resistance. That he'd break his hold. Which was what she so adored about him. This liberty he gave her to say no. To change her mind. To withdraw consent at any instance and know that she would face no ramification, no back lash, no judgement, for that choice.

She could feel the flutter of his pulse beneath her fingertips. Fletch twisted his arm, swapping the positing of their hands; his now on top, her palm now facing the ceiling. Gentle and soft, he then loosened his grip on her even further, giving her a look that plainly said she wasn't to move hen hand when he let go. Jac rolled her eyes, but curiosity had won out for the moment, so she humoured him. God what on earth must this look like to the rest of the ward as they stood cocooned in their little bubble – this was _exactly_ the sort of material that kept the gossip wheel spinning.

Fletch held her gaze as he fished around in his pockets for something, cursing softly as he failed to immediately locate whatever it was that he wanted to give her. There was a very real danger that Jac's eyebrow would disappear into her hairline if he didn't hurry the hell up. Idiot. She was going to wipe that cheesy grin off his face if he didn't – "Aha!" his face lit up in triumph a few tedious seconds later, something concealed within his left hand. Thank the ever loving fuck. Her arm had already begun to ache. He reached out and clasped hers – the one stuck awkwardly in mid-air – between both of his. Something cool and smooth and small was placed carefully into the palm of her hand.

A key.

Her blood ran as icy cold as the metal now clenched painfully tight within her fist. A coppery tang clogged the back of her throat. Lungs refused to inflate, refused to draw in the life giving air they so needed. Everything had slackened, as though the entire world had been doused in thick, sticky treacle. Covered in a heavy woollen blanket. Slowed and elongated and fuzzy. Stretched taught like an elastic band; a moment, a split second, drawn out and out and out before it inevitably snapped back without warning, stinging fingers.

A whistling shrieking sound filled her ears as she watched his mouth move, gaze focused on a point just over her right shoulder. His words were muted, muffled. As though he were speaking through water. She'd never been any good at lip reading, could only make out the odd word. "…front door key … no reason t' think…"

Choking. Drowning. Couldn't _breathe_. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. No, no, no she couldn't do this. This wasn't – this wasn't the way it was supposed to be. How – why – _what?_ He couldn't just blindside her like this! Just throw something like this at her after four days of not speaking to her and expect her to – to … to what? What the fuck did he want?!

Jac opened her mouth to _ask_ him – because that was the sensible, logical, grownup thing to do. Because it was exactly what Sacha had advised she do last Sunday. "Aid–"

"Oi! Fletch! Give us a hand, will you?"

And the moment was broken. The elastic band snapped, the world resuming its hectic pace. Fletch pressed his lips hurriedly to her temple, then darted off to help whichever idiot had called for him, leaving her standing in the middle of the ward with a key to his house clutched in her fist and her brain hammering against the inside of her skull. The moment had passed in a heartbeat; gone. Leaving Jac floundering along in the wake of something momentous. Something significant.

* * *

Jac managed an hour before she retreated. Before she gave up and ran for it. Because Sacha wasn't picking up. She'd called him at least twelve times now, but he wasn't picking up. He was probably in theatre. Probably doing what Hanssen paid him to do. Not the point. Not the fucking point at all. An hour. That was how long she managed to last on the ward with Fletch, standing on opposite sides of patients' beds as if nothing were amiss. As if he'd not just thrown her neatly ordered world into disarray.

Her thumb brushed against the offending item in her pocket. Edges sharp. Freshly cut. Probably hadn't even been used yet. Fucking hell.

Well, she only had herself to blame.

She wished she could say that he'd systematically broken down every one of her defences. Wished she could accuse him of laying siege to her walls. Accuse him of ripping them up from their foundations and shattering them to dust. It'd be easier if that were the case. If he had fought his way through her labyrinth of barricades like Sacha had done. Taken a mallet and chisel and chipped patiently away at the icy fortress around her core until he'd tunnelled his way in, despite her constant attempts to throw him out. Relentless and persistent, nagging at her until she'd conceded: "Yes Sacha. We're friends. Now piss off."

But Fletch hadn't broken in. He had respected every single one of her boundaries; had withdrawn every time he realised that he'd pushed her further than she was ready to go. He'd been patient and understanding and he had never, not once, tried to gain from her more than she was ready to give. He had, accidentally, found his way into her small circle of undying affection because she had _let_ him.

Because she had been the one who unlocked, gate by gate, the path into her heart and then, for good measure, shown him the way. Lead him by the hand through every obstacle, every twist and turn until he'd stood upon the threshold and seen the very truth of her. _You do such a good job of hidin' who you really are. But I've looked an' I've seen what's inside._ She'd wanted him here. Needed him. It'd been so easy and so thoughtless and she hadn't even known she was doing it!

With Sacha it was different because they were friends. Just friends. There was a line – a boundary that meant she was able to keep a bit of herself back. A well-oiled mechanism of self-preservation; a survival technique that she'd developed and honed after one too many shitty fucked up experiences. But Fletch? There was no lone, no boundary. Because they weren't _just_ friends. They were more than that – they would always be _more_ than that. So what did she have left to hold back? To keep for herself as a means of insurance. A safety blanket. A get-out clause, so to speak. The only thing she had left to hold back from him was the one thing that was keeping them apart.

And the last person to have had all of her...

But Adrian Fletcher wasn't like that. He wasn't cruel and manipulative. He didn't think a hundred steps ahead or say the right thing to get her second-guessing herself all the time. Didn't make her feel so fucking grateful and indebted and like she _owed_ something to him. That group home had been a living hell. There was no other word that fully described what that place had been like. No other means for her to adequately and concisely sum up her experience there. So when someone had come along who had seemed better than hell, who had said all the right things and done all the right things … of course she'd jumped at it. Dived right into it. Given everything that she had to it.

Because she'd been a _child_. A fucking kid who hadn't known any better. Who hadn't been warned that wolves prowled through the herd wearing kind faces and warm smiles. Hadn't been taught how to recognise them – how to run from them. So he had come along, and because he wasn't like the men who waltz through the group home like it was their personal playground, Jac hadn't realised what he was until it was nearly too late. Hadn't cared that loving him wasn't like the books or the movies until she slowly stumbled on _why_ it was so different. Understandably her head had been all kinds of messed up after she'd gotten free from _that_. Her trust irrevocably broken. The tiniest, smallest, glimmer of intimacy and she automatically reached for the self-destruct button. It had become instinct. Habitual. Joseph … Jonny … her own sister.

The issue was these feelings for Fletch had crept upon her before she'd even caught an inkling of them. So she'd had no time to prepare. They'd come from nowhere because he hadn't been anything to her and then – suddenly, magically – he was everything. One smile from him could easily make her entire day. A cheeky wink from across the table during monotonous Head-of-Department meetings had her fighting to keep a straight face. Had her heart hammering and her cheeks warming. Secretive knowing looks full of a shared knowledge and dirty inside jokes.

She'd never fallen in love with someone without already being in some kind of a romantic-esque liaison with them. Had never started something without being fully aware how and where it might end up. Always had some half-arsed plan already in place for when that happened.

She'd never been friends first.

* * *

It was brisk up on the roof. A hefty wind blowing in dark threatening clouds from the coast. Jac's phone chirped loudly, unexpectedly, from her pocket, drawing her attention away from the dull grey sky and the dull cars with their equally as dull owners far below her.

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _Where are you? xx_

On the fucking roof, where else would she be?

→ _everything okay? xx_

Before she'd really thought it through, Jac was calling him. The phone rang once, twice, then announced that she could _leave a message after the tone_. Had the idiot fallen off the face of the earth in the two seconds since he'd texted her? What an absolute fucking twat. Then she remembered that the elongated beeping sound meant she was supposed to be talking.

"I need to tell you something," she said at last, words tumbling out in a heavy breath. She'd never actually spoken about any of it before, had never dared to voice out loud those terrible things that had been done to her – because if she spoke about them, if she put them into words – then it was true, wasn't it? It became real. Words spoken couldn't be unspoken. Could she really trust this man with the truth of her? "And I know that this isn't fair and that I should have the guts to say it to your face. But … but I don't. Okay? So – so we'll just have to deal with that, won't we?"

God, what was she doing?

How did she begin?

"I um…" Jac let out a bitter laugh when her voice refused to function, when only air escaped her lips in place of words. But much like a heaving steam engine slowly gathering momentum as it pulled away from a platform, they came. Building and building until suddenly she couldn't stop even them if she'd wanted to. "Okay, here goes … something happened to me when I was a kid. Something – something I've never told anyone. Ever. Not even Sacha. And I know I said that Sacha doesn't count, and he doesn't. But this … this is something I've never been able to talk about. I don't particularly _want_ to talk about it. But it … it matters. It's … I – you need to know. You deserve to know."

It was cold. She was already shivering. Fuck sake she should have grabbed her hoodie. Or sought a place to hide that wasn't outside. Fuck him! fuck him and his stupid key and his thoughtfulness and his insight and just _fuck him fuck him fuck him!_

Fucking him might actually solve the problem though … who was she kidding? If she wanted to _just fuck him_ she'd have done so by now. Would have gotten him out of her system and moved on without looking back. Fucking him wasn't the problem at all.

"I want this," she whispered into her phone. "I want us. I want us so badly that…" Jac licked her lips, the cold wind biting. "But I can't. I really, _really_ can't. Because the way you make me feel…" How else could she make him understand? How else could she explain to him that he was better off without her? So she had to tell him – as hard as it was, she had to tell him. "Someone once – a long time ago. Before Jonny and Joseph. Before I was even Jac Naylor. Back when I was still … still that kid." She snorted. _"Jackie Burrows_ … and I know you're not an idiot. I know most people put two and two together with the whole Fran thing. That I lied to her when I said I'd never been got, and that–"

Her throat closed, constricting, starving her lungs. She had to swallow back prickling tears, had to wrestle to keep her voice steady. Had to ignore the way her stomach churned and the way her heart pounded against her ribs. Had to tell herself that the fear flooding her veins wasn't real. _Wasn't real_. Just a memory. A ghost. An echo.

"See I was just a kid, I was – _Christ …_ I was Evie's age!" Fucking hell on earth what a truly terrifying, awful, disgusting thing to realise. She laughed deliriously, voice breaking, gut clenching, bile rising in her throat, at the mere thought of it. "Fuck me, no. I can't do this – Adrian I can't … I can't do this. I thought I could tell you – I thought … God I was – _I was…"_

She yanked the phone away from her ear and hit the red circle at the bottom of the screen.

Then staggered to her knees, vomiting up her breakfast.

* * *

Jac didn't hear the door to the roof open. Didn't hear the crunch of footfalls on gravel and dirt. She barely heard the countless sounds of the city caught on the wind; of the sirens and engines and chatter from the hospital carpark; children screaming and shrieking in nearby playgrounds. Too cold and miserable to care. Mind so trapped within her own trauma tha the rest of the world ceased to exist. _She'd been Evie's age_. He hadn't texted her or tried to call. She had no way of knowing if he'd even received her voicemail. Or rather – half a voicemail. She'd not exactly explained anything had she? Chickened out the instant it had got difficult. She didn't know what she'd do if he hadn't gotten the message; didn't know if she could bring herself to finish.

Someone joined her at the edge of the roof.

"Might I inquire as to what has you up here on such a miserable and rather cold afternoon?" Henrik Hanssen asked, polite as ever.

Jac shrugged a disinterested shoulder. "Love."

"Ah."

When he didn't say anything further, when he said nothing of the puddle of vomit a few meters away and the sour stench stemming from it, she rolled her eyes. "What about you? Why you up here in the freezing cold?"

Hanssen turned to her slightly, a strange look in his eyes. "Love," he quipped.

She didn't ask. Didn't need his troubles on top of her own. Didn't particularly care either. Silence fell between them – not exactly comfortable, but not uncomfortable either. A simple, quiet, understanding among associates. Four ambulances pulled up during the time the mismatched pair stood and observed the dominion below; each vehicle's arrival initiating the same ritualistic dance as staff spilled from hospital doors to surround the back of the brightly painted van.

"It seems to me," Hanssen said abruptly, as if they had been conversing the entire time rather than just standing, or in Jac's case slouching, hunched against the unrelenting bitter wind in just her scrubs, along the railing, "that love could be labelled 'poison' and we'd drink it anyway." She snorted, shifting on her feet and shoving her frozen fingers under her armpits, but the truth of his words she couldn't deny. "We cannot pick and choose who we fall in love with. Perhaps the wisest course is to not fight it when it happens."

His words settled uncomfortably with her. "Not–" Jac cleared her throat and cast her gaze around the empty roof. "Not even when that love makes you into a version of yourself that you're ashamed of? Not even when it's wrong. When it could destroy you? When you can't see who they really are, so you're blinded by it?"

Hanssen smiled tolerably – though it looked painful, as if such an expression was unfamiliar to his facial muscles. "Adrian Fletcher is neither Joseph Byrne, nor Jonathan Maconie – nor even Matteo Rossini. I'll go further, if I may, and point out that he is categorically _not_ whomever it was who treated you ill in your past." The CEO pointed all this out gravely, as if he were making an address to the Board of Directors, not to a troubled and confused colleague he couldn't quite call friend, yet nonetheless related to a great deal more than his other employees. "For what it's worth, I see love as a mutual arrangement."

"How'd you figure that one?"

He peered at her, as though it were obvious. "One gives away their heart in an honest and vulnerable act of trust and gains in return the heart of someone else to safeguard. Don't you think?"

Jac scuffed the toe of her trainer against the bottom railing. "I think it sounds terrifying."

"Terrifying, yes. But perhaps also the most rewarding risk anyone could make," he assured her, casting a glance up at the threatening sky and unbuttoning his suit jacket. "For if it pays off … you'll have someone upon whom you can depend, no matter the ordeals that lie in wait. After all, what is love, if not trust?"

"Did you ever tell her?" Jac asked, attempting to drive the conversation away from her own sorry tale. The lanky CEO's brows crinkled betraying his confusion. "Roxanna," she elaborated.

Hanssen looked away, staring across the rooftops of Holby.

"I get it," she said after a while. "You thought there'd be time for all that."

The first few drops of rain fell from the heavens. Occasional spots that preceded a deluge; wet, cold, heavy globules began their rapid decent. Welcome to Spring, she thought darkly.

"If there is one thing this past year has taught me," Henrik said quietly, taking off his jacket and offering it to her. Jac frowned at his outstretched hand. "There is never the time you think there is." When she didn't stir into movement, he carefully draped his jacket over her shivering shoulders, still warm from the heat of his body. "We owe it to ourselves to be brave, do we not?"

Jac shook her head, slipping her arms into the sleeves and then crossing them tightly over her chest; she must look positively comical. "That's just the problem; I'm not brave. I've been scared my whole life … I've … underneath all _this,"_ she gestured vaguely at herself, "underneath it all I'm still that twelve year old kid whose mother left her on the side of a road and didn't look back. Who was–" she swallowed, voice threatening to waver. "The last thing I am is _brave_ , Henrik." The compassion, the empathy, on Hanssen's face nearly broke her fracturing heart. She shrugged helplessly, because what else could she do? "I'm not … I'm not brave _enough_ – for him. And we both know he deserves so much better than me."

"But it's you he wants," Hanssen reminded her gently.

"We don't always want what's good for us."

"No," he agreed solemnly. "We do not." All he could offer was another painful little smile, and a hand to the shoulder before he left her alone to contemplate her messed up psyche.

* * *

She wasn't at all sure why she hadn't followed Hanssen inside. Instead she took shelter under an overhang from some obscure structure atop the roof. Probably a generator or water tank or something as equally uninteresting. But it was out of the wind, and not immediately within the line of sight from the single door that led into the building, meaning she couldn't be ambushed by another well-meaning, yet condescending, colleague who had, probably, been sent by The Human Hug Machine.

Oddly enough, or perhaps not, the only person she really wanted to talk to was Fletch. Yet the thought of physically talking to him with so much still to unveil … she'd end up going into detail about it all. Would wind up telling him how utterly crap it still made her feel. How worthless and pathetic and fucking ashamed she was by what had happened to her. By the mere _thought_ of what had happened to her. And while that was probably the _healthy_ thing to do, the _sensible_ thing to do, Jac could not stomach it. He would know was much as she could bare to tell him and no more.

She still pulled out her phone though. Still brought up his name on her contacts' list. Still pressed a thumb over that little image of an old-style rotatory phone handset thing. Jac watched the screen, praying that he wouldn't pick up. Praying he was busy – assisting Chloe in theatre with that valve repair or mopping up after Cameron fucking Dunn or anything. _The number you are calling is not available at this time. Please leave a message after the tone_. Oh thank fuck for that! The elongated electronic sound to signal when she ought to begin her message came quicker than she anticipated.

"I … erm," she swallowed. "I'm sorry for – for before. For hanging up. I just…" _I was Evie's age_. "It's just … I've never told anyone any of this before. But I need to tell you. I – I _want_ to tell you."

She forced a heavy, shaking breath out of her lungs. "Right. So. Umm … well I was saying that my childhood was pretty shit, wasn't I? And … and that when I was fourteen someone came along who – who was, who I thought was better. Than that. Better than – than lying there night after night, terrified that it'd be _my_ door that the footsteps stopped outside. Terrified because I knew exactly what happened when they did." Jac picked at a loose thread on Hanssen's jacket, fingers restless on the back of her phone, and shrugged.

"I thought he was better, okay? I thought – He came along, all … all charming and handsome and he _noticed_ me, he _saw_ me, and I thought … I thought he would be better than the shit I was already buried in." She snorted because Christ she'd been so naïve and so stupid and so fucking desperate for any scrap of affection she could find. It'd been so _easy_ for him. She'd walked right into it without a second thought, full of stupid pathetic ideas that he was the solution to her fucked up life. "Only he wasn't better. Not really – not at all. But he made me feel … I – I think he wanted me to be a bit afraid of him. That's how it works, isn't it? That's what they do. But he made me feel … like I mattered. For the first time in my whole life, someone seemed to give a crap about me, and–" _and I fell for it._

Fell for it hook line and sinker.

"And I know you're not like that, okay?" she continued weakly. "I know that you would never … you'd never … would you? I know that. I know … _I know…"_ knew what? That he would understand, when he heard all this? That it wouldn't make him think of her, or look at her, any differently? That he would sooner cut out his own heart than hurt her? "That distance thing I do – keeping people at arms' length and not letting anyone in? It's how I survived. How I got through it. See I can do relationships, up to a point. I can do sex – if I'm the one in control. But there always, _always_ , comes a moment when it's all or nothing. When I don't _want_ to be constantly in control and… And I – I just can't do _all_. Okay? I panic when I feel it happening … I do things – things I'm not proud of, and … I just – I just end up ruining _everything."_

Jac frowned at the murky sky, scowling angrily that it was there to hear her sorry tale. "Look," she said, her voice taking on that strained, warbly quality. "Here's the thing, Adrian Fletcher. You deserve someone who can give you _all_. Who – who doesn't run scared because … because things get a bit real and a bit intimate and…" she shook her head agitation forcing her out into the rain, forcing her to pace back and forth because standing still was too damn hard right now. The more she moved, the easier it was to speak. Her words flowed, waxing and waning, to the rhythm of her uneven footfalls. "Fuck, I don't even know what I'm saying!"

Hanssen was going to need a new fucking jacket.

She half laughed in frustration at that, threads of anxiety pulling taught. "The way you make me feel scares the living crap out of me, okay? You – you came from absolutely _nowhere_ and now … it's like I can't _breathe_ without you. Suddenly I – it's like I'm drowning, and the only thing keeping me from going under is you. Every time you look at me – or smile or – or say something, I swear I fall that little bit more. I can't – I _can't_ stop it and I _can't_ control it and… I feel like I am hanging onto the edge of a precipice, wanting _so badly_ to let go, but–"

Her tears were hot, almost stingingly so, against her cold windswept cheeks. Burning contrast to the freezing rain and the biting wind. Lung shrieked; heaving breaths that failed to calm her down. "You are the place I feel safest, okay? Where I feel most at home and it is _terrifying._ Don't you see? I have to keep a part of me back – it's … it's the only way I learned to survive after–" she couldn't finish the end of that sentence.

"I just can't let go of this fear, Adrian. No matter how much I want to. It's always going to be there, always going to be a part of me." She swiped angrily at her tears with clumsy fingers. "I'm sorry. I wish … I wish I loved you a little less. Because maybe then I'd not be so fucking afraid. Maybe then we could've–"

She hung up.


	6. Voicemail part two

**Voicemail [part two]**

 _noun_

a centralised electronic system which can store messages from telephone callers

* * *

A sigh preceded the arrival of a pair of well-worn trainers to her otherwise bland and uninteresting view of the peeling linoleum floor.

"I've been running between Keller and AAU all afternoon – and _every time_ I've used this stairwell, here you've been, sopping wet and listening to that bloody voicemail from Fletch!" the trainers vanished as he settled dramatically beside her. "Look, we both know Sacha would murder me if I said nothing, so … spill."

Jac threw him a trademark death glare.

"I could just tell him where you are," Dominic threatened easily.

"Or you could go fuck yourself."

He huffed. "I heard some of what he said."

The awful sensation of asphyxia crept over her; that wild panic deep in the gut as all the air was sucked right out of her. Why couldn't people just leave her alone? Jac tried losing her thoughts within the monotony of the key spinning between finger and thumb. A dull glint from the small window catching on smooth, untarnished metal.

"I mean, you picked the _worst_ place to hide. Acoustics in here are … really shit." His shoulder brushed against hers. "And your phone was on loudspeaker so it's not like I was _trying_ to hear."

"Your point, Copeland?"

She could feel him staring at her as he debated the worth of whatever point he wanted to make. She shivered in her sodden scrubs. "I know what it's like," he said quietly, carefully.

"You don't know shit," Jac scoffed.

What the hell did he want from her? Gossip probably. Him and Essie never shut up. And Serena bloody Campbell was just as bad – and Donna! At this rate the entire hospital was going to know all about her crappy childhood. As if it was any of their fucking business. Jac took in the way Dominic was sitting so very still, the way his fists were clenching, how his nostrils were flaring, and merely rolled her eyes. So what? She'd pissed him off. Hurt his little feelings. Big deal. They weren't friends. She only knew the details of his sorry life because Sacha never stopped talking about him…

"Oh _fuck me."_

They sat there awhile, seething with quiet loathing and reluctant comradery. Of all the things that could possibly have brought them together… It should have been their mutual love of sarcasm. Or surgery. He wasn't half bad from what she'd heard, and she was always on the lookout for a decent surgeon to steal and train up as her protégé. Nicky was promising, but Mo had already called dibs. Why couldn't it have been her battle to poach him away from Keller which drew them together? Why did it have to be _this?_

 _Trauma sticks to trauma_. Jac didn't know or care where the thought had come from. Glaring at her with its ugly truth. Staring her in the face with that undeniable persistence. That giant monster full of all the shit she'd slogged through to get to where she was. Greasy claws, chilling grip, ghoulish grin.

"What was his name?" Dom asked out of nowhere.

She battered the monster away. "I don't remember."

"Liar," he countered softly. "You can't forget." Jac wanted to fucking strangle him, wished he would _shut up shut up shut up._ "You can never forget."

"I don't want to talk about it, okay? I _can't_ talk about it."

"Sometimes it's easier to–"

Jac gave him her best 'are you fucking kidding me?' look. "If this is your way of trying some hand-holding soppy pour-out-my-bleeding-heart support group crap then you can fuc–"

"Sometimes it's easier to talk to someone when you don't give a crap what they think."

She snorted. "The likes of us _always_ give a crap what other people think. That's why they pick us in the first place, isn't it? Because – somehow – they know we need the attention that they give us. Know we need to be relevant. Need to be…"

"Wanted."

Jac nodded, grateful her stomach had finally stopped churning, even if the taste of bile still burned the back of her throat … tea. Tea would wash it away. But tea would mean venturing into civilisation and risk encountering a certain someone she wasn't ready to see just yet.

"Sometimes," Dom said then, his voice reminding her she wasn't alone in this half-forgotten corner of the hospital. "Sometimes, something will happen and … it's all I can think about. And I think – how can everyone else _not_ be thinking it? How do they just _carry on_ like it never happened? But it didn't happen to them, did it? They don't have to live with it."

If she was someone else, she'd ask what had happened to bring it all back for him. Because if it hadn't been on his mind, he wouldn't have thought twice about Fletch's voicemail. He wouldn't have cared that she was sat, alone, slowly freezing to death in a disused stairwell.

"Sometimes the only thing that gets me through the day is _not_ thinking about it," she offered. And then when Dom said nothing and the silence began to grate on her, Jac found herself babbling into the stillness just to fill it. "I don't let myself think about him … or talk about him. Because by _not_ talking about it – I'm winning. I'm _beating_ him." A painful moment of silent understanding hung between them. "Sometimes that's all I have."

Fletch got it. Well – he got _her_. She doubted he could ever fully understand this, and as selfish as it was, part of her didn't want him to. Not in the way Dom got it. Because it would mean he'd have lived it. And the thought of anything like that happening to him… He could understand why her emotions constantly tripped her up when it came to her mother; he got that because he'd lived it too. He'd never lived this, and she never wanted him to know the part of her that had.

"It's strange," Copeland was saying.

"What is?"

"You. In love the way you are with Fletch." What the fuck? Where had _that_ come from? What in the name of–? _Shitsticks!_ She must have spoken out loud without realising it … fucking hell almighty what was wrong with her today? "Everyone says it's different for you this time. That it's the real deal." Jac didn't know what to say to that. What could she say to that?

"How long were you with him?"

She blinked. "Jonny?"

"No – _him."_

Jac shrugged off Hanssen's sodden coat, because honestly it wasn't helping. Just a freezing blanket at this point, refusing to lend her warmth or let her dry off. How long had she been with _him?_ Too long. Too fucking long. "You're lucky you know," she stated instead. Dom stared at her blankly, arms folded tightly across his chest. "Sounds awful to say it, but you were. You had people to fight for you even when you couldn't see what he was."

Dominic turned away. "How did it end?"

Oh, the were a right pair, weren't they? Dodging one question by asking a completely different one altogether. Maybe it was some kind of trauma-survivor-mechanism thing. If she looked, not that she was inclined to, there would probably be studies and papers and research all about it. Someone had probably made a career out of other people's coping habits.

"Everyone thinks he pushed me," Dom met Jac's frown with a shrug. "He didn't … but somehow it was enough. In the movies they make it seem so dramatic. But it isn't – or it wasn't for me."

"You were pushed down the stairs. That's pretty fucking dramatic."

"What about you?"

It was Jac's turn to shrug as she resumed her contemplation of the key. When she eventually spoke, her confession was whispered to the echoing stairwell. As though that would be enough to keep her secrets contained. "I ran away."

Indecision raced through her. The urge to get up and flee and the urge to just … to be rid of this awful thing that she absolutely hated about herself.

"I had my final A-level exam. Maths I think – or maybe Chemistry. I can't remember which." But they both knew that was a lie. Jac licked her lips, agitation setting her nerves ablaze. "I knew he'd be waiting by the school gates when I finished. He'd told me not to go – made me swear on my life that I wouldn't. Because if I didn't sit the exam, I couldn't pass it. So I'd never get into university and I'd never leave. I knew that if I walked through those gates…" _I knew he'd kill me one day_.

"What did you do?"

Jac tucked a strand of sodden hair behind her ear. "Climbed over the fence at the back of the sports field. I ran," she let out one of those little laughs people give in uncomfortable situations. Half filled with contempt at herself for getting into such a stupid situation in the first place, and half filled with the desire to lessen the gravity of her words. "My default setting after all… The first chance I got I changed my name so that he could never find me. I left that pathetic kid I'd been behind and … and became _this."_ Fuck. She'd not meant to divulge that bit of information – fuck-damnit she'd not meant to divulge anything!

"Do you wonder," she asked before he could think of something to say. "Do you wonder if … if the next person you let in – that you fall in love with … do you wonder if…?" _if it'll happen again._

"Fletch isn't like that," Dom assured her, not answering the question, but by not answering he was as good as answering. "You're going to hurt yourself if you don't let it go," he indicated her closed fist, and the key clutched tightly within it.

She pried her stiff fingers loose and stared at the thing. "Adrian gave it to me this morning," she murmured as he rose to his feet, hands digging through pockets for his phone.

"And? – oh _fuck!_ I'm late!" Dom regarded her with speculative eyes. "Don't suppose you could put in a word for me with–?"

"Nope."

* * *

Dom shouldered his way onto Keller in time to see Bed 7 being wheeled toward theatre in that half-run, half-walk that was used when every cased turned slightly urgent. Breaking into a similar stride, he sped toward the nurses' station where Essie, Sacha, and Ange were gathered.

"Where have you been?" Sacha demanded as Dom reached them. "Trever Harris was your patient!"

He faltered for just a second – everyone had been looking for Jac all day so if he were to reveal he'd found her, the pile of shit he was likely three seconds from landing in would probably turn into a chorus of thankful adoration. But Jac didn't want to be found. Had specifically chosen that staircase because of its infrequent use. The echoes of the voicemail she'd been driving herself insane listening to still sent that chilling spike of dread through him _…when they was creepin' int' your room in the middle o' the night.._. Thanks Fletch, he'd be having nightmares about that for weeks.

"Dom?" Ange prompted when he didn't immediately answer.

"Someone needed my help," he said lamely, but not untruthfully. "I was where I was needed."

"What does that mean?"

For crying out loud… Dom shook his head and decided to be as vague as humanly possible in the hopes it would placate them. It was, after all, none of their business – none of _his_ business either, yet here he was, somehow in the know when Sacha wasn't.

"Something shit happened to someone – and I've been through similar shit, so I just," he shrugged. "Guess they needed a shoulder to cry on type thing." He half laughed at that. _I don't do shoulders to cry on_ , Jac had once told him. "Not that there was any crying," he quickly added. "Just a lot of … a lot of stuff got said that needed to be heard."

Ange narrowed her gaze at him, and on top of the weight Jac's secret carried was that uncomfortable feeling of guilt. He never liked lying to his mother – Carol always somehow seemed to know when he was doing it; so, it appeared, did Ange.

"Someone?" Sacha asked quickly, eyes narrowing, "someone we know?" Dom glanced at him and nodded once, wondering if the myth that Sacha had a sixth sense when it came to people talking about Jac was actually true. "Is she alright?"

"Depends on your definition of alright." Ange was looking between them; mouth open ready to ask who the hell they were talking about. Dom caught the look Sacha shared with Essie and rolled his eyes. _Just leave her alone,_ he thought. "Don't we have a patient waiting with an obstructed bowel?"

* * *

Fingers, itching with the need to fiddle – to be kept busy – tugged her phone out of a damp pocket. Gaze snagging on the image displayed as her home-screen. On the easy grin and the sparkling, glinting, grey eyes and the slicked-back hair falling haphazardly over his face. Despite being half sure she knew the entire voicemail by heart, Jac still pressed her thumb over the 'play' option. The first ten seconds of the message consisted of nothing but the faint sounds of his uneven breathing. Of his agitation. His uncertainty.

Then an explosion of noise burst, crackled, through the speaker. "I … I don't know what t' say. I mean … there's stuff I wanna say – I just … I dunno where t' start. I … I'm sorry? I guess? I'm sorry … I'm so sorry Jac."

The first time she'd played the recording she'd hung up at this point. Heart pounding, sweat turning her already damp skin clammy. Afraid that he was going to announce that her final confession had been too much for him – that she really was far too broken after all. Terrified he might start to pity her. It hadn't been until her fifth time listening that she'd worked up enough nerve to let the message play on, having finally convinced herself that it wasn't any of those things lurking in his tone.

"I'm sorry 'cause … 'cause whatever I say won't be enough, will it? It won't … I can't just … I can't _make_ it all better – but," and even though she knew what came next, the way he teetered, lingered, seemed momentarily stuck on that 'but', made her erratic fingers – and the key spinning between them – motionless. His words tumbled over one another as he hastily, hurriedly, added; "but baby if I could I would. I swear I would."

Jac's heart always fluttered at that part. Always seemed to skip several beats, and for a blinding few seconds her entire body froze, gasping, choking, stuttering. Because he'd made the declaration so thoughtlessly, effortlessly, unthinkingly, that he'd just glided right over that clichéd term of endearment. As if he had been calling her that all his life.

"I'm sorry that this – that _that_ happened t' you. I'm sorry that you was let down by _so many people_. Sorry that there are people who – who probably took one look at th' scared little girl whose mum 'ad just done a runner an' decided t' look the other way. Decided not t' protect ya. 'Cause they should've," he declared fiercely. "Protected you – they owed you that."

His statement reverberated through the empty stairwell every time she played the message. Echoed in her chest and across her ribs. Rippled down her spine and into her empty belly. Vibrated all the way down her legs to the tips of her toes. Thinking about it, it really wasn't surprising Dom had heard as much as he had done as he rushed past her all afternoon.

"Y'know, there's a part of me what wishes you never said a thing," Fletch continued quietly. "I mean … the thought of – of … an' you were a _kid_. You were…" _Evie's age_. His struggle to force his thoughts into coherence seemed to increase threefold each time Jac played his message. Like he was pounding on the words with a metaphorical hammer in an attempt to drive them out of his throat. "It ain't fair. I wanna – I wish I could – I just … I just know I can't do anythin'. I can't make it go away, and I can't…" his heavy exhale rattled the speakers on her phone, the entire thing vibrating in the palm of her clammy hand.

"I hate 'em. For what they did t' you." Fletch's voice was low and dark and never failed to send a prickling shiver down Jac's scarred spine. A subtle air of menace polluting the cold tranquillity of her hiding spot as the anger he kept well buried – that consuming rage he felt at the sheer unfairness of the world – which no one seemed to take seriously except her, clawed its way to the surface for one, brief, moment. "If … if I ever met 'em … I dunno – I dunno what I'd do. Somethin' stupid I expect." Jac resolved to never tell him their names. To never tell him, if on some twisted off-chance she stumbled across them. Because she had a fairly good idea what, exactly, he might do.

"I _hate_ that they can get away with it. That they jus' – that they knew no one would care enough t' do _somethin'_ to stop it. You were a kid … a scared kid – 'cause how could y' not be? When they was creepin' int' your room in the middle o' the night. And – and then," his voice wavered for a moment, threatened to break, "an' then he took advantage of all that didn't he? Jus' 'cause he could. An' he probably got y' thinkin' he was god's gift t' man-kind or somethin'. Got y' thinkin' you was never gonna be good enough."

Made her so pathetically grateful for the slightest bit of attention and affection that he showed to her; she'd known no one else was going to look twice at her. She had to take what she could get – or so she had believed. All of this Fletch hadn't needed her to tell him because he knew her well enough to picked up on everything she hadn't said.

"It's why I reckon surgery means so much t' ya," she imagined him rubbing the back of his neck in that way of his. "Because you _know_ you're good – you're the absolute fuckin' best. No one can take that from you. _H_ _e_ can't take that from you."

No one _could_ take surgery from her. Not unless they were prepared to pry her scalpel out of her cold, dead, hand. Although for a while last year, that very possibility had petrified her; that someone – first Fredrik, and then Gaskell – had robbed her of the one thing she thought couldn't be taken. The one thing she had fought for. Risked her life for. And even now the thought of it caused her breath to hitch in her throat and her heart to stammer a staccato rhythm against her ribs. _No one can take that from you_. It was nice – more than nice really, but she didn't have enough of the right words, so nice was going to have to do – that he thought so. That he was so sure of it. Of her.

But the fragile pump lodge in her chest, held together with thin golden sutures, was buckling under the weight of Fletch's words. Every time she reached this part of the voicemail it felt as though her heart caved that little bit more. Crumbled that bit further because it was just too weak to hold itself together. Too diseased to function as it had been for the past forty odd years.

Decaying and crippling under the unfamiliar weight of the feelings he evoked within her. That empathy and understanding. That acceptance. Because he didn't want her to change. He'd never asked her to. He'd just taken one, all-encompassing look at her, and simply accepted what he'd found without question or judgement. Maybe her heart needed to break in order for it to shed the failing outer shell it had been clad in for so long. That icy fortress she'd hidden within after fleeing to university. It had become a cage – a prison even – rather than a sanctuary. Doing more harm than good as it kept her isolated and apart, kept her from that which would make her happy. Maybe the lump of muscle beating in her chest needed to shatter.

And she deserved to be happy – didn't she? After all the shit her life had dealt her, she deserved a little bit of good, surely?

Maybe the mechanism that had kept her safe during medical school had fed into her distrust and, she could admit to herself, her fear of intimacy. All that running that she did whenever a relationship became, or threatened to become, something more… Because what always came next was this unveiling of her inner self. That broken child who had been brutalised and terrorised and neglected; who hadn't known what love was meant to be until she'd fucked it up.

She'd been unable to fully trust Joseph, and then Jonny, enough to let them see the full truth of her. Had known that it would change the way they looked at her. Neither man had liked it when she mentioned the odd morsel from her shitty past; Jonny had always taken the view she was joking – Joseph that she'd been lying. It was easier to be a liar than to become a victim in their eyes. Something to be pitied. To be fixed. Who didn't know any better. She wasn't looking for excuses. Wasn't searching for a reason to explain away her behaviour; her fuckups were her own. She'd known exactly what she was doing, had known exactly what the consequences would be. Those choices were hers and she'd made them, and she'd be damned if she let anyone try and explain them away through _trauma_.

Jac had been turning that particular revelation over in her mind when Dominic had interrupted. Probably to make him feel better about himself, hearing fucked up she was too. After all, there was a strange morbid comfort in knowing that someone else wore the same scars. It had taken Jac all afternoon to reach her moment of clarity; had sat for hours in cold damp scrubs at the bottom of a disused stairwell in order to find it. She'd needed time. Time to wrap her head around it all. To figure out what the fuck she was feeling and wanted and – and if Fletch had said enough of the right things for her to make the leap she so, _so,_ desperately wanted to make.

This point in the cycle of listening, and then thinking, was always when the automated voice returned, inevitably disrupting the flow of Jac's frantically whirring mind. _To hear the message again, press one…_ Only this time it didn't come. Instead Fletch's voice continued to echo in the empty space and with a heart-wrenching jolt, Jac realised that there was more. That in all her previous rounds of playing his message and then soaking in the words, she'd only been able to process a fragment of a greater whole; that the rest had been blocked out.

Holy hell on high water what more could he possibly have to say?

"Mostly," he seemed to shrug, a sound halfway between a sigh and a groan rumbling through the phone, "mostly I'm jus' sorry. Sorry that it took me so long t' find ya." He half laughed in that charming way of his – with a rueful grin and a glint in the eyes. "I – see I 'ad a mistake or two t' make first."

And for the first time since she'd seen him that morning, Jac smiled. A painfully joyful smile that caused a few unshed tears to fall. Hadn't they both? She doubted they'd have been so drawn to one another if they hadn't _lived_ so damn much. Two sides of the same battered coin; she understood _why_ he had made the mistakes he'd made because she'd made them too.

"If your kid hadn't lobbed that brick at mine that day," Fletch chuckled, a warmth spreading from the phone speakers to chilled fingers, up her numb arms and into her chest. "God, I love 'em two little monsters."

He–?

Did he just…?

Hearing Fletch saying that he loved her kid, Jac realised in that instant, was exactly what she'd been waiting for all along. Somehow it was more important, more vital, than hearing him say it to her.

He cleared his throat. "Listen – we don't have t' talk about it if you don't want t'. I won't ever – I'm not gonna _make_ you talk about it. I – thank you. For trustin' me with it. I … I just wish you'd never 'ad to. I wish…"

She wished she'd never had to either. Fletch fell silent and the pause went on so long that Jac wondered if that was it. If the message had just _ended_. Before she had a chance to decide if such an abrupt ending was something to be a bit miffed about (considering she'd left him with two voicemails that had ended halfway through sentences), Fletch swore and muttered to himself.

"Fuck me … well it's now or never init?"

Now or never what? Jac's nerves were shot, trembling with dreaded anticipation. How much more of this could she take? She was going to give herself hypertension at this rate; heart pounding and pounding and pounding...

"Look. Y' said – before in y' voicemail. You said that you can't breathe? 'Cause it's too much – how I make you feel? Like you're drownin' in it?"

Oh shit … where was he going with this? This was going to be the moment he pulled out that 'I think we should just be friends' card wasn't it? Shit. Shit. Shit. Shi–

"Baby I'm already at the bottom of the fucking ocean." The words tumbled out in a great rush. Spilling rapidly over each other in their desperation, their eagerness, to be spoken. To be heard. It sounded like he was hopelessly trying to keep up as his heart seized temporary control of his mouth. "I'm already so far _in_ that I ain't lookin' for the way out. I'm already _there_ , baby. I'm already – I'm – it's like I'm standin', yeah? At the bottom of a cliff an' I can see ya clinging on up there and – and just _let go_. 'Cause I'm right here and I – I just … I – Jac I swear, don't make me tell y' I love ya over the fucking phone!"

Wait … hold up – _what?_

"Shit – 'ang on Nicky … Jac I gotta go. Bay 4 is tryin' t' do a runner."

 _To hear the message again, press one…_

What? _What?_ What the fuck had just happened?

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Jac sprang to her feet, clutching the banister to haul herself upright, pins and needles stinging in her frozen feet. The key, and her phone, clattering to the floor.

She had to find him.

* * *

Halfway up the stairs her phone chirped. Numb fingers nearly dropping it as she tugged it out and glanced at the screen. Feet systematically placing themselves one in front of another as she climbed flight after flight after flight; thighs burning. So cold that she was half worried she'd never move again if she stopped.

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _at least let me know you're alive! x  
_ → _shift ends in ten. Can I drive you home? xxx_

Beneath the messages on her lock-screen were two more notifications informing her she had '1 new voicemail' and '3 missed calls'. Both a good five minutes old, and both from that irritatingly charming idiot Hanssen hired to be Director of Nursing nearly two years ago. Thief. Jac paused outside Keller, her thumb having already tapped on the voicemail notification. This time she wisely lifted her phone to her ear, rather than letting Fletch's words fill the old stairwell.

"Look," he said firmly, voice crackling in the recording, "about that stupid key." Jac had nearly – _nearly_ – forgotten about the damn thing. "I didn't mean anythin' by it, okay? I didn't mean t' scare ya – I just … I just thought after the other night, an' you said … you was…"

A right sobbing mess?

"You don't have t' use it. You don't ever have t' use it. _Ever._ I just thought… I jus'…" Fletch groaned in frustration, and then laughed slightly. "I jus' got a bit carried away is all, okay? I – chuck it in th' canal if it'll make y' feel better. I don't care. It's just a fucking key."

That was the point Dominic had been going to make before he'd realised the time. _It was just a key._ Not as if he'd gotten down on one knee in the middle of the ward. Asked her to move in with him. Abandon her name for his… All he'd done was prove, yet again, ho much he trusted her. Trusted her to have unrestricted access to his home, his life, his children.

Fuck sake Naylor. Blowing everything out of proportion, _again!_

She had to give him his due; he had intuitively known that it was the key he'd given her which had triggered her instinctual need to run. Seemed ridiculous really, thinking about it now, that such a small and unoffending item could cause so much grief. She supposed in some way it was also a good thing – now he knew everything; knew why she was afraid to take things further between them. Knew why it'd be unfair of her to try.

Leaning heavily against the nearest wall, Jac tapped out a response.

Jac Naylor  
→ _I need to change first x_

Then she felt she ought to explain where she'd been all this time.

→ _was on the roof … got a bit wet  
_ → _and cold.  
_ → _sat for ages on the stairs. I needed to think  
_ → _xx_

Jac let her head fall back against the wall, eyes closing and legs threatening to give way beneath her. Which was when a gaggle of what could only be overexcited medical students burst out of Keller. Over the top of the racket someone was valiantly trying to give them directions. Jac doubted anyone was bothering to listen. "…the floor below. Take a left and you can't miss it – Oh. There you are."

It was Touchy Feely.

She glanced at Jac, taking it all in. From the soggy trainers to the still dripping hair to Hanssen's sodden suit jacket draped over an arm, and finally to the trail of rainwater leading down the stairs. Chattering medical students yet to be disillusioned bounced off the walls as the group made their way to whichever department was expecting them. Poor sods.

"You look in need of a good cup of tea."

Jac opened her mouth to tell the other surgeon to _mind her own fucking business_ , but instead what came out was more along the lines of, "I could kiss you."

Ange held open the door with one of those understanding smiles she used on her YAU patients. "You might want to let Fletch know where you are," she said as they made their way to the staff room. "He's spent all day looking for you. He's even been interrogating the patients!" Jac rolled her eyes, and though Ange was joking, she wouldn't put it past him to have done just that. Perhaps that's why Hanssen had approached her earlier – sick and tired of all the complaints, he'd set out to find her himself.

"I know," Jac sighed as she followed Ange into the mercifully empty staff room. "He's going to–"

"Jac!" Someone warm and large and so perfectly cuddly enveloped her from behind, carrying her further into the room. "You're freezing!" Sacha exclaimed, which evidently gave him the excuse he needed to hug her tighter. "You're _absolutely freezing!"_

"I'm _fine."_ Fine-ish, anyway.

"Fletch has been–"

" _I know,"_ she said quickly, trying to wriggle free, but she wasn't nearly as adept at it as she liked to admit, and Sacha was very warm. "It's fine. I – he's going to drive me home in a bit. I just – I need to get changed first."

Thankfully Ange approached them with a steaming cup of tea, forcing Sacha to let her go. He coaxed her over to the small sofa stuffed into the corner, wrapping an arm around her as they sat and Ange exchanged Hanssen's wet, and probably ruined, suit jacket for the mug of tea. "Best drink up first; dry clothes won't help much if you're still freezing cold."

Jac chose to avoid answering by sipping the tea. Warm comforting liquid thawing her chilly core. It was good tea, and definitely just what the doctor had ordered. She wasn't sure why she was surprised her phone chose that moment to chirp. Sacha snorted in amusement beside her.

Adrian Fletcher  
→ _see you on Darwin in a bit? xx_ _  
_→ _get warm xxx_

In a fit of what she suspected was sheer bravado, he sent a couple of those tacky heart emojis – Darwin blue ones of course. The corners of her lips twitched as Sacha rested his chin on her shoulder. The fat idiot had _zero_ subtly when it came to sneaking glances at her texts – but it _was_ reassuring to know he was keeping a watchful eye on her back.

Jac dropped her phone back into a pocket and shrugged Sacha off, thrusting her half-finished mug of tea into his hands. "I need to get dry," she informed the room.

She needed to find Fletch.

* * *

A/N: _apologies folks for taking so long with this update - i had exams for college that i had to focus on! all being well (and unless i decide otherwise) there's just another couple of chapters to go_


	7. Facetime

**Facetime**

 _noun_

time spent speaking or meeting with one or more people face to face, in contrast to phone conversations or other means of communication

* * *

Mercifully, the locker room was empty.

Jac slumped onto the bench, utterly and completely exhausted. The cold, sodden, scrubs clinging to her body had that cheap, uncomfortable man-made feel to them. Twisting her face into a wince. Limbs felt like they were made from lead. It took more effort than it should have done to reach down and fumble with shoelaces. Eventually she gave up and wrenched the trainers off her frozen feet by sheer force, almost toppling off the bench in the process. Wouldn't that have been amusing for whoever found her: _What happened Jac? Oh nothing. Just broke my fucking back trying to take my shoes off. As you do._

She flung her trainers across the room – and then immediately regretted her action because she was going to have to wear the stupid things tomorrow. Rolling her eyes at her own idiocy, Jac retrieved the water-logged trainers and set them over the radiator; thank god for year-round hospital heating. Luckily there happened to be some clean towels stacked on the shelves with fresh scrubs; Jac seized the top one and began the process of disrobing.

Naturally it was just as she was wrapping the towel around herself, having finished peeling off each rain soaked article of clothing (yes, including underwear) and discarding it on the ground, when the door opened. For a moment Fletch looked like he'd swallowed his tongue. Mouth open but no sound coming out. A faint flush crept over his cheeks, most of it hidden beneath his beard; his gaze sweeping across the empty room and falling, inevitably, upon the pile of wet clothes by Jac's bare feet. She refused to look anywhere but at his left elbow.

Irrationally, she suddenly wished she'd pulled on the lacy red bra and matching knickers this morning. The new set she'd bought yesterday, rather than her usual bog-standard black cotton.

"Can I help you?" she asked when he said nothing.

"Seriously?" there was a distinct note of incredulity coating his voice. "That's all you have t' say? _Can I help you?"_

"What am I _supposed_ to say?" she threw back.

"I dunno!" Fletch gave a slightly maniacal laugh, fingers running through his hair. "I jus' know I've been runnin' all over the place tryin' t' find ya 'cause you just _vanished_ on me." Was he seriously going to do this? "An' them voicemails were – _fuck_ – y' just… How – what … what am I meant t' say, Jac? I mean you jus' went and dived right in didn't ya? Dropping that bombshell on me … an' – an' then t' top it off you say you was as old as _my daughter_ is now when–"

She was surprised he couldn't hear the clanging of iron as her fortress gates slammed shut. "I'm not doing this," she told him blandly, turning to her locker and pulling out the clothes she'd arrived in earlier that morning.

"Oh, come off it!"

Jac smashed her palm on her locker door, aluminium giving under her frustration. Great. Now she had a busted wrist and a dented locker on top of everything else. "I'm freezing cold and wetter than I can ever remember being; can I _please_ get changed in peace?"

"I ain't stopping ya!"

She glared at him. "My body looks like a fucking Picasso painting, Adrian. So, will you kindly fuck _off."_

"If that's how you want it t' be–"

"It is."

He stood for a moment, mouth once more opening and closing with nothing coming out of it. With a little contemptuous huff, he then spun on his heel and yanked open the door. Jac was mildly surprised when it didn't come off its hinges. "Fine."

"Fine."

" _Fine."_

Jac grabbed a wet trainer and threw it after him, hard as she could, gripping tightly to her towel in order to maintain her dignity. The trainer bounced off the door with a wet _thunk_ as he slammed it shut. Well, she supposed as she retrieved the shoe, that lift home was off the table then.

* * *

The carpark shimmered like the surface of a fathomless black lake, LED headlights and blue sirens reflecting like shapeless monsters of the deep. Rain flooded the tarmac, nowhere for it to go except the token flowerbeds around Raf's memorial – roses and tulips and irises drooping under the relentless rain – and the small patch of green with its solitary picnic bench. A favourite lunch-break haunt turned into an ankle deep bog.

Jac huddled under the shelter outside the main entrance, contemplating if it was worth lingering a bit longer in the hopes the deluge lessened. During an almost imperceivable pause, wherein it seemed the heavens were drawing in a much needed breath, she spotted Fletch dashing out of one of the hospital side entrances. Headlamps flashed as he jumped into his car.

In a move that was probably nothing but sheer recklessness; a decision made in a split second – in the space between heartbeats – Jac stirred. The rain roared with doubled intensity as half dry became fully wet. She darted across the carpark, slipping between parked vehicles and skipping over deep puddles. Numb fingers closed around the passenger door handle of Fletch's car, wrenching it open. She dived into the seat before he had a chance to turn the key in the ignition.

The door fell shut behind her with a heavy thud.

"What d'you want, Jac?"

"I don't know," she admitted.

Fletch snorted, jaw clenching and unclenching, fingers gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. "Then get out."

"No."

"Jac – _get out."_

"Not until you talk to me," she insisted.

"Not until I–?" he shook his head in disbelief, words failing. "D'you hear y'self? It's a bit rich, init? I wanted t' talk up on Darwin, but you–"

" _You_ promised you wouldn't _make_ me," she snapped. "In your voicemail, you said you'd never, _ever,_ make me. Yet the instant you saw me, you decided you were going to _talk_ about it." Fletch grunted, fingers slipping down the steering wheel. Rain lashing against the roof, windows starting to fog. She let her head fall back against the headrest, eyes drifting shut. "But maybe–" Jac swallowed past the lump in her throat before voicing the thought that had crept into her mind after their quarrel, "maybe it's stupid of me to think that we can ignore what I said."

He turned to her, a question in his eyes.

"I don't know," she repeated softly. "But I want to try." Fletch reached out and clasped one of her clammy hands in his, warm fingers lacing through her numbing, freezing, stiffening ones. "We won't … it's not like all the other times, is it?" she turned her head slightly to look at him. "When we can pretend that it never happened. If we _don't_ talk about it…"

"I know." She wasn't sure how long they sat like that; felt like hours. Days even. A lifetime. But it couldn't have been more than a minute though, when Fletch finally stirred, running his free hand down his weary face. "You talked t' Dom about it?"

Jac frowned, glancing at him. "How'd you know that?"

"Sacha told me."

Fucking Dominic Copeland.

"Apparently he was nowhere t' be found – bit like someone else I know," Jac chose not to dignify that with a response. "An' when he showed up, he said he'd been busy talkin' with someone who'd been through some similar shit t' him. Somehow Sacha knew he meant you."

Maybe she really ought to consider poaching him...

"Dominic gets it," she explained to the glovebox. "In a way you and Sacha never will. In a way I never want you to. I didn't _want_ to tell him. It just … needed to come out." Jac shifted in her seat, handbag digging into her back from where she was half sat on it. In her hurry to clamber into his car, she hadn't cared where it had ended up, just that she got the door shut before he drove off. Before he left her. "I don't want you to know that part of me," she confessed. "That broken, defected, used and abused and fucking pathetically _naïve_ part of me."

"But it's still a part of you, Jac," he pointed out quietly. "So, why can't I know it?"

"Because it's _not_ who I am!" The words tore from her throat, catching and ripping and scratching as they clawed their way out. Filling the inside of the car, lingering in the space between them. Jac stared through the misted windscreen, a prickling in her eyes and the back of her throat tightening. "You know now that it exists. You know that it's there. But it's _not me_ , Adrian _._ Not anymore, okay?"

Fletch stared at her for a long moment, and she couldn't tell what he was thinking. Or maybe she was just too afraid to look, scared of what she might find. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay." It couldn't be that easy, could it? He squeezed her hand for a moment before pulling away, half groaning as he twisted the key in the ignition. "D'you want dinner?" he asked.

Jac stared at him as though he'd grown three heads. "What?"

"Food," Fletch elaborated. "D'you want some … with me?"

There was a dismissive laugh caught in her throat. "Like a date?"

He shrugged, checking his mirrors. "Call it what y' want."

She swallowed thickly, biting her bottom lip. She could say no, and he'd drive her home like he'd originally offered; but what did she have to lose? She _was_ hungry – hadn't eaten since breakfast. Through the rain-spotted windows they watched colleagues dashing to and from their cars, bags and jumpers and bits of probably important paper held over their heads. "Alright," she said at last. "But you're buying."

Fletch laughed as he turned the steering wheel and backed out of his favourite parking space – not like the painful ones recorded in his voicemails. The ones that slipped out to try and dissipate shitty situations. This was a proper laugh. "And why might that be?"

But Jac found his sudden levity grating. Found it exhausting. The secrets she'd shared with him were still too freshly spoken. Even if everything did seem so much better when she was with him, she couldn't summon the effort to even _try._ Perhaps that's why she said what she did.

"My day was worse than yours."

His smile faded.

* * *

She was mostly silent as they drove to the restaurant. As he pulled out the hospital carpark, Fletch asked if there was somewhere in particular she wanted to go, but all she could do was mutter something about _anything other than McDonalds._ Drained. Utterly drained. And pale, worryingly so – virtually grey with exhaustion. Luckily the steady rumble of the car engine, and the rain lashing against windows, quickly coaxed her into a gentle, much needed, doze.

There were a million and one things he wanted, and needed, to say to her; a thousand promises ready to utter. The absolute pain and panic and _fear_ that her voice had carried in her voicemails had been enough to break his heart. _You are the place I feel safest_. In the end that was all that mattered really; that she felt she was safe with him. That she felt she could trust him with her painful secrets. And the least he could do was turn up the heating and give her time to recharge. With that in mind, Fletch chose a restaurant on the other side of the city.

The engine shutting off was enough to wake her. Jac blinked and stirred, momentarily confused by the unfamiliar surroundings beyond the windscreen, a prickling of panic creeping up her spine – until she glanced to her right and saw Fletch, ready with a reassuring smile. It didn't matter where they were, she realised as they got out the car, because he was here too. She couldn't resist slipping her hand into his as they strode across the carpark and into the restaurant. He led her confidently through the building toward a series of booths along the back wall, thumb stroking the back of her hand.

"Gotta order at the bar," he explained, removing his jacket, "what d'you want?"

She shrugged, opening the menu with disinterest as she sat down. She made no attempt to take off her coat. "Don't care. I'm not hungry." Fletch watched her, heart bleeding. God this woman … he wanted to wrap her in his arms and never let go. Wanted to hold her tight and shield her from the cruel world – would happily do so with his own body if that's what it took – so that no one could ever hurt her again. He also knew his tough-as-nails surgeon would smack him if he ever tried to suggest that she needed someone to protect her.

"How's 'bout we share a pizza?" he offered. "They do some pretty good ones here. At least the kids approve of 'em."

She shrugged and he took that as a yes.

"Wine?"

"Do birds have wings?"

He smiled, unable to resist touching her shoulder. "Won't be long," he promised.

She watched him go, weaving through the tables as he rolled up his shirt sleeves. Several pairs of eyes drifted away from their partners, or their plates, as he passed by. Knowing that those eyes would still be following him as he returned to her eased the blazing hot flash of envy that seared through her core. Jac sighed as she pulled off her coat, settling into the booth. At least Jonny wasn't dropping Emma off until late this evening.

"Hypothetically," she began, fiddling with the key that she'd placed on the table after their empty plates had been cleared away.

"We dealing with hypotheticals now?"

"That is what _hypothetically_ means," she flared. Then closed her eyes and bitterly wished she could take back her tone.

Fletch regarded her sheepishly. "I dunno why I keep teasin' ya," he admitted, scratching an itch on the underside of his jaw. "I know you ain't in the mood for it. I'm sorry."

Jesus Christ – _she'd_ been the one to snap and _he_ was apologising!

"I … I didn't mean to – I just…" she groaned and buried her face in her hands, fingers running through tangled, rain-soaked hair.

"Hey," Fletch murmured, "it's _okay."_

It wasn't _okay_. It was anything but _okay_.

"You was gonna say," he prompted. "Hypothetically?"

"I – yeah. Hypothetically … if I," she cleared her throat and straightened in her seat. "Say I decided that I was brave enough."

"Brave enough?"

"To risk … to be with you. Say that I was brave enough to – to choose … for us to do this." Her fingers were moving so erratically that the key slipped from her grip and shot across the table, clattering quietly to the floor. Jac clenched her hands into fists while Fletch bent to retrieve the key. _Fuck sake!_ "And, um," oh great; now her leg was jittering. "Well I'd not be choosing it – us. This. You – I'd … I'd not be choosing it because us being together makes sense. I mean," she stumbled, "I think maybe we do? Sacha says we do. But – um, I'd choose us because…" she swallowed, willing her nerves to jus _ease off_ , "because you make me forget there even is a choice."

Fletch's eyes held a hard edge within them, and Jac realised she now owed it to him to listen to his _hypothetical_ response. It was his turn to fiddle with the key. "It'd, um," he shrugged a shoulder. "Well it'd be it, y'know. No going back. It'd be all or nothin' for me. I can't have y' flakin' out in a few months just 'cause you're scared. It ain't fair, an' it ain't gonna be fair on the kids."

Jac shook her head, heart in her throat. "I can't promise that I won't – or that there won't be times when I'll want to – and _need_ to run. But I'll come back. I'm _always_ going to come back, Adrian." Yet she knew that promise alone wouldn't be enough. Knew also that she didn't have the words to reassure him. He was right to be sceptical. It was this 'all or nothing business' he just _had_ to bring up; instincts screamed at her to run.

"I don't wanna be sittin' round waitin' for you t' come back all the time, Jac."

It wouldn't be _all_ the time!

"You _have_ to promise to let me have my space when I need it! When it gets too much to handle, and I need to … need time to – to process, to think, to … to just…" she closed her eyes and took a deep, shaking, breath. "I need to know," she said firmly, staring at the table, "that if I go … that I have a reason to _hurry_ back. To sort my shit out and … I need to _want_ to deal with it, Adrian. Whatever it is that'll make me run – that'll scare me absolutely shitless – I want to be able to manage, and I'm going to need some breathing room to do that."

Fletch sat back, now spinning his empty beer glass between his hands; key abandoned on the table between them. "So long as y' know that I ain't gonna share ya. You can't go off an' think that whatever happens when you ain't with me don't count."

"You really think I'd do that to you?" she demanded, a blazing flash of resentment coursing through her.

"I know what you're like, Jac," he said calmly. "I know what you're like when you get it in y' head that you need space. I know you'll do anythin' it takes t' drive people away jus' so you get some."

"I wouldn't do _that,"_ she whispered.

"Wouldn't you?"

He had a point – she'd done it plenty of times before. Jac blew out a trembling breath, cursing quietly because fuck she could hardly see her eyes were that blurred. She rummaged clumsily through her handbag, swiping at tears before shoving her glasses on. They didn't help. "So I really am just … _beyond_ any kind of fixing then?"

"I told y' Saturday," Fletch said firmly, _"you don't need fixin'._ So you need t' stop thinkin' like it." Had it really only been Saturday? "I like you _exactly_ the way you are."

"Fucked up childhood and all?"

He grinned, warmth and fondness and _love_ twinkling in his grey eyes. "Every fucked up chapter of it, baby."

She couldn't help but let out a little half-laugh-half-sob at that, because she _liked it._ Because as clichéd as it was, it felt nice. To be wanted; to be given a nickname that only he used. She didn't say anything though; he'd probably be embarrassed if she drew attention to it. It was probably just a slip of the tongue rather than a conscious decision.

"How's about we make a deal," Fletch said slowly, scattering her thoughts and causing Jac to look up at him. "If you do get scared – if somethin's wrong – if y' need a bit of space or it gets too much or anythin' – you tell me." She opened her mouth, not entirely sure what she wanted to say, but Fletch held up a hand to stop her. "Jus' tell me. You don't have t' explain anythin'. Don't have t' tell me why or … or anythin', just – you can jus' say. And that'll be that."

Jac frowned in confusion.

"All I'm askin'," he said softly, "is that you _don't_ do what you did t'day. If I do somethin' or say anythin' that makes you feel overwhelmed or scared or – or anythin' – then _tell me_. Tell me an' I'll back off. I'll give you as much space – as much time – as you need if that's what you want… Just don't run away like you did t'day. Don't vanish on me."

"Just … tell you?" she queried. "And then what?"

He ran an agitated hand through his hair. "And then nothin'. Or everythin'. I dunno, sometimes … sometimes it's enough, init? T' jus' say _somethin'."_

Jac thought it through for a moment.

"What if there are people there?"

Fletch faltered for a moment, chewing on his bottom lip as he scrambled to concoct a solution. "We can – I dunno … come up with a secret code or somethin' … if y' want."

"A secret code?" she snorted. "Like in those spy movies Mikey loves?"

"I'm just tryin' t' help!"

Jac reached out across the table and took his hand, toying unconsciously with his fingers as she slipped her own between them. Worn and weathered and strong; hands so much larger than her pale ones. So much warmer. "I know," she assured him, "and you do. You always do." He stroked the back of her hand with his thumb, it seemed to be his little habit, and Jac was reminded of another evening sat with him in some out-of-the-way corner of a pub. When they'd sought out alcohol to chase away the demons which had awoken during the funeral of the nurse who'd died in the ring-road collision. When he'd shared funny stories about Raf, and she'd realised that she had no funny ones about Jasmine.

"What kind of thing were you thinking," she murmured. Fletch leant forward, resting both elbows on the table, his free hand toying with the sleeve of her jumper. "For this secret code of yours."

"Ours," he corrected, tapping her wrist with a finger. Then he shrugged a shoulder. "I dunno … I guess you could say somethin' an' then only I'd know what it meant."

She rolled her eyes. "Yes Adrian, that's how a secret code works."

He pulled a face but continued as if she hadn't interrupted. "An' if we're with anyone else, an' it gets too much – gets too overwhelmin' for ya, or–"

"I don't get–"

"Yeah you do," he countered, fingers wrapping themselves around her wrist. He could probably feel her pulse thrumming; everything seemed to focus on that point of contact between them. The gentle touch of his middle finger on the inside of her wrist, tracing out bluish veins. "For a thousand reasons," he murmured, "most which have somethin' t' do with the shit you don't wanna talk about. An' with the shit in that group home. An' with y' mum." Jac turned away, tried to pull her hands back, automatically seeking the nearest exit, but Adrian's hold on her tightened. Became, suddenly, an anchor keeping her steady.

She lifted her gaze to his once more.

"Somethin' happens," he said, "and you react." It took a moment before she realised that he wasn't expecting a reply. Jac found herself clutching his hands rather tightly, suddenly terrified that if he let go the earth would disappear beneath her feet. "An' most the time I reckon it's because everythin' feels like it's all too much t' handle all at once." She nodded slightly, head barely moving – but he saw it, he caught it, and he squeezed her fingers in reassurance. "So when that happens – all you gotta do is tell me, an' I'll give you all the space you want. An' if there's people about, then I'll getcha as far away from them as you need."

"I don't get overwhelmed," Jac muttered darkly.

He chuckled in dry amusement. "How else d'you explain what happened t'day?"

"I was…" she frowned. "I was _scared."_

"Because…"

Because it had all been too much. Because it had come from nowhere. Because the thought of everything that went with the stupid key, on top of everything that she wasn't saying and didn't know how to say, had gotten the better of her… Had overwhelmed her.

"So what do I say then?"

"What?"

"This secret code you're banging on about. What should I say?"

He grinned as he shrugged, eyes sparkling. He truly made her feel like she was the only person in all the world that mattered. "I hadn't really got that far."

Jac couldn't help the small grin of her own; an upwards tugging on the corners of her mouth that quickly dropped as a dark thought settled over her. "I've made you a deal," she said then. "That I'll tell you if I get scared, or if something's wrong. I'll try to tell you." She met his gaze, a rueful, apologetic tilt twisting her lips, "it may take a few false starts."

"I jus' need you t' try."

She nodded, words sticking in her throat. "So, can … can you make a deal with me?"

"Anythin'," he promised.

Somehow, this one _tiny_ request that she couldn't help but make was harder than confessing the truth of herself to him. Because if he refused … it would well and truly shatter her walls for good. Leave her standing in nothing but an empty field, exposed to the terrifying wide world, with four words echoing around her. The words that swelled in her throat as she sat in that booth were the same ones that had gotten stuck there that day in June when she had been just twelve years old. When she'd stood, a slow spread of panic descending over her, on the side of some unknown road as her mother sped off without her. They were the same words that she'd cried out when they'd wheeled Jasmine into theatre. Words engraved into her soul.

"Please don't leave me."

"Jac…" she was surprised her name was long enough for her to hear his voice break.

"Everyone always leaves in the end," she tried to explain. "My mother … Joseph, Jonny, Mo, Elliot … Jasmine. Fuck sake even the fucking dog's gone! Gone with – with Petrenko. Zosia's left, _again,_ and – and one day… One day Emma will pack up and leave too." Jesus she was holding onto him so tightly that the tips of his fingers were turning white. Jac forced herself to relax, blinking past blurred vision. "So if you don't think you can stay with me – if … that's fine, okay. I can – it'll be fine. I'll be fine. Just … tell me now. So I can – so that I know I can't have you forever. So that I know–"

"Jac Naylor," he whispered, cutting her off, "I promise you, no matter what happens with us," and she remembered then that all this was, supposedly, a _hypothetical_ conversation. "I'm not goin' anywhere. I – the kids, for starters, ain't about t' let us fall apart are they?"

At the look of doubt still on her face, he leant further across the table. "If I 'ad things my way, we'd grow old an' miserable t'gether, you an' me. We'd die sittin' side-by-side in matchin' armchairs at a hundred an' thirty. They'd burry us t'gether, an' in a thousand years uncover our bones an' put us in some fuckin' museum with some soppy note 'bout love ever-lastin'."

Jac choked on a strangled laugh, a couple of tears leaking down the sides of her runny nose. She had to untangle a hand so she could swipe away the leaking body fluids; fingers bumping against glasses as she dashed away tears and pinched at her nose, wiping beneath it with the back of her hand. Fuck she'd always been a messy crier. Fucking hell, she probably looked like an absolute nightmare! Well, at least she hadn't bothered reapplying makeup after getting changed earlier.

"No matter what," Adrian promised, his own fingers catching a few more tears before they could fall further than the tops of her cheeks. "No matter what, it's gunna be you an' me. 'Cause we've got a forever kinda thing, ain't we? You feel it, right? That we're gunna make it … somehow, we'll make it t' that shitty museum and that soppy sign you already hate."

She shook her head at his words. His sheer _faith_ and confidence and bravery bouncing around the inside of her skull. "If I don't screw it up, you mean."

"You gotta stop that," he whispered. "You jus' gotta stop. Otherwise you will. You'll tell y'self you'll ruin it, so that's what 'appens. Self-fulfillin' prophecy an' all that shit."

"Been reading internet guru blogs again?"

Adrian shrugged easily, the mood lightening in their little booth. "Passes th' time."

 _I fucking love you_.

* * *

The ground was damp beneath their feet; gravel crunching and the fresh breeze carrying the memory of the deluge with it. Halfway to the car Jac sighed and stopped, tugging on his hand. Adrian frowned and tilted his head, silently asking what was wrong. Nothing was _wrong_ , she was just … _tired_. Because she wanted him, and for some reason he wanted her too.

"I'm sorry I got scared," she said, dropping his hand and taking a few steps away, needing that bit of distance. That space.

"Jac…"

"I'm sorry that I wasn't ready – last year. Last October."

"Jac–"

"I'm sorry that I'm … I'm not good enough for you, and that I _don't_ – I haven't done anything to deserve you, and that–"

"Jac–!"

"And I'm sorry because I _will_ ruin this, one day, Adrian, but I've–"

" _Jac!"_ he tried again, but she wasn't listening, couldn't hear him over her anxious babbling.

"But I've spent so much time worrying – panicking – that I would ruin you. The thing is," she shrugged, having to clear her throat to strengthen her voice. _"The thing is_ , I never realised that it didn't matter if I ruined you. Because you've already ruined me."

The heavy breath that escaped him sounded like her name.

"In the best way – I think. Because…" she worked the words around her mouth, testing them first to see if they felt right. "Because the edges – my edges. The broken ones that don't fit anywhere … they fit with your edges, don't they? Because you have them too. You just – you can just hide them better and … and we fit. That's why we…"

"Yeah," he whispered. "Yeah – exactly that."

"I love you," Jac said then, her admission hanging there in the damp air. The shock on his face mirrored her own; she never, in a million years, would've thought that she'd be the one to say it – physically say it – first. Had never thought she had the nerve to dare without a concrete assurance that she wasn't being a complete idiot. "I love you…" she repeated softly, "and I don't want to spend a second without you."

She watched his throat flex as he swallowed, her eyes wet and bright, knees threatening to buckle, because _fuck_ those were tears dripping down her face. "Good – I … good."

The stared at one another; the world falling silent around them. _Good?_ What idiot thought _good_ was an adequate response to a declaration of love? Jac waited on his next words with bated breath, fists curled and clenched at her sides. Body vibrating with the effort it took to rein herself in, to wait while he gathered himself together. Some powerful internal struggle raging within him; the urge to just _fucking kiss her already_ juxtaposed against the need to say something first. Eventually, though, he gave up on the elaborate, expansive, heartfelt confession.

"I–" Adrian cleared the frog from his throat, entire body shifting a miniscule inch toward her; refusing to invade the safe zone she'd wrapped around herself until she let him. "I love you … too. I … an' I don't wanna spend a second without you either."

She could have pissed herself the relief was that good. And when Adrian's phone made a racket, breaking the moment, interrupting before they could get any further, she laughed out loud. Then wished she hadn't because her bladder decided, probably since the thought was on her mind, that it was full.

"Me dad," he pulled a face. "Wantin' t' know when I'll be back. Think his Mrs wants him home."

Jac nodded, "Yeah okay – I need the loo first." Or she might _actually_ piss herself.

"I'll get the car."

* * *

He'd just pulled onto her drive, hand break protesting as he parked beside Sacha's car, when he said, with a little laugh, "Fletch."

"What?"

"The code. When you need y' space or whatever. Call me Fletch." Jac narrowed her gaze, eyebrows furrowing, wondering if he had gone completely mad. "No – think about it," he said earnestly. "It's brilliant!"

"How?"

"Because when's the las' time you called me it?"

"I…" she didn't know. Couldn't remember – because he wasn't Fletch to her anymore, not really, he was _Adrian_.

"An' everyone calls me it. So when y' need your space of whatever, you can be all 'Fletch, yada yada yada' and I'll know somethin's wrong."

"Yada yada yada?"

Adrian rolled his eyes as a goofy face appeared in the living room window. Fucking Sacha. "Y'know what I meant," he nudged her with his elbow. Jac battered him away. "So when there's people with us, no one is gonna notice, are they? 'Cause–"

"Everyone calls you it," she finished slowly. Maybe it would work … no one _would_ notice. And it'd be simple enough, wouldn't it? Nothing too difficult on her part. Before she could think any further on it, however, Adrian cursed darkly.

"Oh for fuck sake!"

"What?"

"Some tosser's jus' blocked me in!"

Jac twisted in her seat to peer out the back window, seizing hold of his jacket before he could clamber out the car and start yelling at the other driver. "It's just Jonny," she informed him, recognising the battered old red dump the father of her child chose to drive; God the last thing she needed was the two idiots getting into a pissing contest.

"What's he doin' here so late?"

"He's dropping Emma off. He has to fly to the States tomorrow for some reason – something wedding, or fiancée related I think – and he wanted to see her before he left." Adrian nodded slowly, and Jac rolled her eyes. "What? Did you think he was here for something else?"

"The thought never crossed me mind."

Jac grinned. "Your pants are on fire," she teased as she opened the car door.

"Oy," he called when she was halfway out the car, tugging on her arm to pull her back inside, "you forgot somethin'."

"What?" she asked, checking pockets for her phone, then that everything was still in her handbag.

She looked up to see that Adrian was smirking, an odd expression lurking in his eyes. He reached up and pulled off her glasses, knuckles brushing against cheekbones. Her chest fluttering, pulse racing. She watched as he carefully closed the spectacles, met his unblinking gaze as he pressed them into the palm of her right hand; wasn't prepared for the way he practically _grabbed_ her face. Jac's free hand, the one that had been on the door handle, flew to the back of his neck.

"This," he breathed.

Last October it had been a hurried spur-of-the-moment thing, something that had happened before either of them had fully realised it; a rushed, desperate, over-before-it-had-begun kind of thing. This time it was different. This time they had _time_. Time for her to feel it as he grinned against her lips when she opened her mouth a little wider. Time for her to mumble 'shut up' before brushing her tongue against his. Time to relish in it. In the feel of his mouth moving against hers, with hers; in the way his teeth scraped against her bottom lip and the way she couldn't help but lean into him.

She wanted more, more, _more._

It was one of those kisses that people got lost in. The kind that no one wants to interrupt. Slow and unhurried and _real_. The kind that made her want to invite him inside – that made her forget her best friend was peeking through the living room window, that her ex was unloading their daughter from his car, and that Adrian had four kids waiting for him back at his place.

God she could just stay here forever. Kissing him. Being kissed by him. He was humming in the back of his throat; she could feel it reverberating through his chest in the hand she didn't remember placing there. Glasses slipping from her grip. His fingers curled through her hair, tiny points of pressure on the base of her skull. Five more just under her ribs – over _that_ scar – as he slowly, unconsciously, drew her as close as he possibly could. In the back of her mind, Jac was certain that were it not for the hand break and the gear stick, he'd have pulled her into his lap by now.

It wasn't Emma's loud shout of, "Mummy!" that jogged her back into the real world, but rather the fact that her small child had literally _thrown_ herself into Jac's unoccupied lap. She grunted in annoyance and pulled away, ignoring the smirk on her daughter's face. Adrian was going to have to go home and explain to his kids, and to his father, why he looked like he'd been dragged backward through a hedge. She tried not to get distracted when he tucked a strand of hair behind an ear, and then winked conspiratorially – just as the front door opened to revel Sacha with a shit-eating-grin on his face.

Jac turned to her child, ignoring the weight of the hand Adrian had yet to remove from the nape of her neck. "Come on you. Shall we go inside?" Emma nodded, waving a quick hello and goodbye to Adrian as Jac shut the car door behind her. She determinedly avoided eye contact with the two men standing at her front door, feeling very much (she imagined) like a teenager having been caught by parents.

"Was she good?" she asked Jonny.

"As an angel."

Jac snorted. "This is our daughter you're talking about," she reminded him with a little grimace. He hummed in agreement. It was their routine, their ritual exchange that took place every handover. Emma had probably come to expect it because she looked between them both with amusement then, bored, turned to Sacha to show him something.

Jonny glanced at the car beside Sacha's, frowning when Adrian waved merrily at him through the windscreen. Jac resisted the urge to laugh; she did _not_ want a falling out on her driveway. "What's he waiting for? Permission to leave or something?"

She ignored the dig. "You've blocked him in, Einstein."

"Ah."

He didn't linger after that, perhaps because he was worried that Adrian might get out the car and join them if he didn't unblock the drive. Jac stood with Emma and Sacha on the doorstep as her daughter waved an enthusiastic goodbye to first her father, and then to Adrian. Then once both cars were out of sight and they all had gone into the house, closing the door behind them, Emma turned to Sacha as she finished pulling off her shoes. Tiny hands on narrow hips.

"Uncle Sacha?"

"Yes, Emma?"

"Did _you_ see Mummy kissing Fletch?"

He laughed. "Yes. Yes, I did!"

"Oh good," the child said. "I thought I'd made it up in my head."


	8. Home

**Home**

 _noun_

the place where one belongs

* * *

This was ridiculous.

She'd been sitting in her car, parked just round the corner from his five bedroomed detached, for at least twenty minutes now. The key he'd given her ten days ago weighing heavily in her pocket – well, no. It was actually attached to the keychain currently dangling from the ignition, but the metaphor still stood. A tugging, insistent, relentless nag wherever she went. A constant reminder that he wanted her in his life, no boundaries or walls between them. No locked doors.

And it wasn't as if she hadn't been to his place in the days since; over the past week or so she and Emma had spent near enough every evening with him and his troop. It had all been very … domestic. She hadn't actively chosen to start spending so much time there either, even if they were now _A Thing_. It had just … happened. A new habit formed simply due to convenience and chance and Jac's complete and utter intolerableness.

See, the Thursday after she and Adrian had become _A Thing_ , Emma's nanny had decided to quit – the fourth one in three months – a mere fifteen minutes before her charge was due to be kicked out of school. Jac's insufferableness had been cited as one of many reasons why the resignation had been made. Over a text. Naturally, she'd been ready to castrate Cameron fucking Dunn with a dull scalpel just because he'd been the first person that she' d seen within five minutes of receiving the news. The entire situation had felt like a personal insult. A slap in the face. A deliberate fuck you from the universe to prove just how shit she was at this parenting thing.

Which was when Adrian had swooped in (not at all like a white knight on a prancing pony, or a gleaming superhero with a red cape or anything) and arranged for Steven to pick Emma up. "One more won't make a difference," he'd pointed out as Jac tried to protest, flashing that reassuring smile that never failed to make her heart melt. "An' Theo's been bangin' on about Emma coming round t' play for ages."

That evening she'd followed him to his place, intending to collect Emma and then go – Waitrose closed in half an hour and she had nothing in the fridge – but sweet little Ella had cajoled her into joining them for tea. Eyes wide and imploring as she wheedled her way past Jac's instinctual and habitual need to run screaming from any form of social interaction. So, she stayed. And it'd been easy. Thoughtless. Not one child batted an eyelid at her presence on the other end of the dining room table. Emma sat happily between Theo and Evie, legs swinging wildly beneath the table as they dangled off her chair, trading silly faces with Mikey, and chatting animatedly with Ella as if she did it every evening.

Steven had assured her, as he'd pulled on his coat and stepped out onto the tattered welcome mat, that he'd continue to pick up her unruly child from school until Jac was able to make other arrangements. And though she still had her reservations about the man, though she still couldn't quite trust him the way Adrian did and accept that he wasn't going anywhere, she'd thanked him nonetheless. He wasn't Paula. As if to prove that point, just before the door closed Emma cheekily managed to yell out, loud as she possibly could, "Bye Grandad!" from the top of the stairs. She'd then erupted into a fit of giggles with Theo, the pair of them scampering away.

So that had been that.

Jac groaned, pressing her forehead against the steering wheel. Why was this so damn difficult?

Because she _wanted_ to use the key. That's why. Stupid thing had been burning away in the back of her mind all week, and though he'd no once mentioned it whenever she rang the doorbell, not mentioned it at all in fact since the day he'd given it to her, she couldn't help but wonder if he was thinking it. Thinking, why give it to her at all if she wasn't going to bother to use it?

Oh for fuck sake! This was utterly ridiculous. She yanked her keys out the ignition and wrenched open the car door. Fuck it. Fuck it fuck it fuck it.

* * *

Evie was wandering aimlessly down the stairs, with her face glued to the screen in her palm, as Jac half tripped over the threshold. The teen glanced up and something like fear shot through Jac's body. A flaring, frenzied, flash of panic at being caught letting herself into the house.

"I – erm," she cleared her throat, babbling uncontrollably. "Your dad gave me a key and–"

"I know," Evie said, utterly unfazed. Evidently the phone in her hand, buzzing and pinging insistently, was far more important than catching her father's sort-of-girlfriend-they-hadn't-got-that-far-yet halfway through the door. And since the doorbell hadn't rung, it was clear as shiny crystal that Jac had just let herself in. "You gotta take your shoes off," she added as Jac stood rooted to the spot, clutching painfully tight to the key in the lock, door still wide open. "Or y'know Ella will hassle you 'bout it. She's weird and annoyin' like that."

Jac blinked, shocked at the total disinterest as Evie disappeared down the hall. It took a moment before she was able to shrug the incident off, truthfully grateful for the lack of fanfare. She half wondered if Evie had known that _not_ making a fuss was the best way to mark the occasion. Shaking her head, Jac closed the front door and kicked off her shoes, adding them to the endearingly messy pile under the coat stand. She wasn't quite sure why it was endearing. The unordered chaos should have had her palms sweating. Then she caught sight of Emma's trainers, scattered among the clutter; two little white shoes that instantly brought startling clarification to explain away her ease and comfort. Before she moved away from that irritatingly small space between the door, the coat stand, and the bottom of the stairs, she couldn't help but bend down and tuck her own shoes neatly to one side of the heap.

Thundering footsteps belonging to someone rather small and rather excited tumbled down the afore mentioned stairs, causing Jac to glance over her shoulder. "Oh," they said, completely underwhelmed. "It's just you Mummy."

"You sound rather annoyed that I'm here, face-ache."

Emma shrugged. "Well … yes. I am Mummy." Jac raised an eyebrow, which in turn had her daughter's eyes rolling in their sockets. "We're gonna watch Big Hero Six!" she explained as if it were obvious and Jac should already know this. "Theo and Ella ae waiting because I needed a wee, so we absolutely _can't_ go home until we've seen Baymax!"

She laughed, absolutely no idea who Baymax was supposed to be. "Well go on then," she encouraged, interrupting her daughter's prattling of 'balalalalalalalala'. "Or they might decide you're taking too long and start without you."

Emma's face was one of 'they bloody better not!' as she rushed past Jac into the living room. Chuckling to the sounds of Theo assuring Emma he'd never let them start the film without her, and Ella's confirmation that he'd hidden the TV remote to ensure it, Jac proceeded down the hallway. Almost walking right into Evie as Fletcher Spawn #1 made her return trip, a glass of something in her hand and her eyes still pasted to her phone; she'd emerged from her from merely for refreshment then. Typical.

"Dad said we're gettin' takeout for dinner," the teen informed her as they squeezed past one another in the narrow hallway. "He don't wanna cook."

"That's fine by me." But Evie was already halfway up the stairs. Jac shook her head, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

* * *

Adrian's kitchen floor was cold against her bare feet.

Mikey stood at the skink washing mud off the new football boots Jac had got him for his birthday last month. Kid had refused to speak to her for almost a week after he'd learned that she'd given away Gary the dog to Frieda. In the end Jac had conceded defeat and realised that, without Gary, football was the way to Mikey Fletcher's heart. She'd lied when Adrian had asked her how much the branded Nike boots had cost, giving him a figure for less than half the actual amount. Mikey was still wearing his equally muddy (and sweaty – god why did teenage boys have to smell so much? It was as if now that he was officially an adolescent, he'd become a hundred times grosser) football kit. How, exactly, he'd gotten covered in so much muck when it hadn't rained since the day she and Adrian had become _A Thing_ was a question Jac refrained from asking. She doubted she wanted to know the answer. So that was four Fletchers and her own child accounted for.

"Where's your dad?" she asked by way of hello.

"In the garage. Fixin' somethin' or somethin' I think." He shrugged, unconcerned, hadn't even glanced over his shoulder to look at her. Hadn't questioned her sudden, unannounced, presence in his dad's kitchen. Evie might have given him a heads up, though it was probably more realistic that she'd just entered the kitchen to seek out some juice from the fridge, and not bothered to utter a single word to her brother. Jac supposed it was a good thing that Adrian's kids were no longer perturbed about her and Emma being there so often. Maybe this whole key to his house thing _wasn't_ completely nuts after all. Maybe she ought to think about giving him one to her place…

Hold up. One step at a time there Naylor.

"You'll clean all that dirt off the sink when you're done, right?" she checked, unable to walk past without saying something about the mess he was creating. "And take a shower before you stink out the entire house?"

"Yes _mum!"_

Jac bit her tongue. She was beginning to suspect being a shit was part of Fletcher DNA.

* * *

Adrian's radio was tuned to a classic rock station and he was humming along discordantly to _Livin' on a Prayer_ , the loud music mingling with his voice to fill the tepid space. Well it could have been worse, Jac mused as she glanced around, it could've been bloody Tom Jones or something equally nauseating.

It was a generic garage filled with nick knacks and boxes; overflow storage for items that wouldn't fit in the house or needed to be accessed often enough for the loft to be out of the question. A washing machine churned cheerfully next to a stationary tumble dryer, vacant and waiting with a load in a basket sat atop it. An empty space had been cleared near the garage door allowing room for Adrian to work; tools and parts and other nameless items scattered around him in what Jac truly hoped was ordered chaos. Someone – she doubted it had been him because the thing looked positively ancient – had built a sturdy workbench against one wall. She chose to perch against it, content to just watch while he fiddled, oblivious to her presence, with the engine to a half assembled old motorcycle.

At work they were always busy, always rushing and moving and hardly having a chance to pause for breath, let alone take a moment to just _watch_. It was nice. Peaceful. He oozed serenity and sincerity; a grounding wire to discharge those pent up biproducts of her undiagnosed and unacknowledged PTSD. Anxiety. Irritation. Frustration. Soft flesh peeked through a small hole along the join of the left sleeve of his fraying t-shirt. Paint stains and grease stains littered his well-worn jeans, betraying years' worth of constant use. There was something special about being able to see him like this, she decided. Relaxed and happy and completely at ease. He wore odd socks.

Adrian twisted in the direction of his toolbox, searching for another implement Jac didn't know the name of, and caught sight of her bare feet. Painted toes. His eyes rose to meet hers, a warm smile on his face. "How long y' been there?" he asked gently, turning the dial down on the radio.

"Not long," she lied. "New project of yours?" she nodded at the pieces littered around him.

"Next door was gonna chuck it," he shrugged, tossing the screwdriver back into his toolbox. "Caught them tryin' t' load it into a skip when I got home yesterday evenin'. The old fella was plannin' to rebuild it, but he died a while back before he got the chance. Think he was an enthusiast or somethin' back in the day. Anyways the Mrs wanted it gone an' said I could 'ave it for a few quid."

"It's a Harley Davidson."

"Yeah. Some XR model, I think. When it's done you wanna take it for a spin?"

She smirked. "Sure. If you think you can handle it."

He grinned up at her. "Anythin' t' get you int' them bike leathers." Adrian's eyes raked over her, tongue darting out to lick his bottom lip. Rather than looking away, feigning interest in something else, pretending she couldn't feel the weight of his gaze lingering on her, Jac watched him watch her. It was strangely intimate yet comforting at the same time. Thrilling, yet calming. "You look good," he murmured.

Jac rolled her eyes. "I've just spent four hours in theatre and another two before that in an emergency MDM with Touchy Feely–" she checked herself, because after last week it was only fair that she used the woman's actual name, "with Ange and His Grand CEO-ness. I look anything _but_ good."

She'd just gotten out the shower that morning when Hanssen had rung. The Imperial March echoing loudly and ominously until she'd answered the bloody thing. All she'd had time to do was pull on a pair of jeans and a jumper, load Emma (still in her pyjamas) into the car and race round to Adrian's while texting him to at least _warn_ him of the situation. She'd handed over her groggy child to a bemused Evie on the doorstep, and then dashed off to the hospital at Hanssen's urgent request. It'd been while she was in the middle of the MDM that she'd realised she'd not even had time to slap on makeup; hair twisted into a tangled knot on the top of her head.

Adrian returned to the engine, fingers sticky and black with grease. "I've seen ya worse."

"Oh. Charming."

"Ain't been scared off yet 'ave I?"

"Yet has a rather uncomfortable ring to it."

She watched his shoulders rise and then fall heavily in a weary sigh. Watched as he reached out a hand to turn off the radio, plunging the tepid space into silence – save for the rumble of the washing machine and the hum of the florescent lights above them. "I ain't goin' nowhere, Jac," he said into the quiet.

Jac shifted on her feet, she knew that. Could feel the truth of it in her bones. But that didn't mean she could _trust_ the unfamiliar feeling.

"I'm not … I ain't _him_. I swear, I'll never–"

"I know," she interrupted, because otherwise he'd start talking about it. And she absolutely did not want to talk about it. Ever. "I _know_. Okay? You don't have to promise me anything. Promises can be broken, and neither of us needs any more of those weighing us down." She bit her lip, his words from last week playing on her mind, encouraging her to prattle on. Jac spoke to her chilled toes, a small shrug on her shoulders. "But the doubts that he's left me with? The fear? It's not going to go away, Adrian. Not today, not tomorrow, not even in ten years' time. You're just going to have to accept that, otherwise what are we even doing?"

"Have I ever said that I didn't?" he didn't snap – but almost. Not that she would have blamed him. Her insecurities and doubts frustrated her too. She wished she could just abandon them on the side of an unnamed road as casually as her mother had abandoned her. Wished she could live her life without distrust and paranoia and fear constantly following her wherever she went. With nothing to say, Jac refrained from snapping back at him. No one said this would be easy.

Adrian turned back to his engine.

"Pass us the torque wrench will ya?" he asked a few silent minutes later; clearly having already moved passed the moment, rather clinging onto it until it festered. Which was Jac's habitual method of dealing with disagreements. The ease with which he could let something go still startled her, but perhaps that was because she was always so ready for confrontation. Always poised to defend herself, to lash out, to fight back. To make a stand because if she didn't then no one else would. It'd become a necessity. But there was no need with him because it wasn't an issue; he'd simply stated a fact and she'd allowed it to rest as just that. How positively adult of her.

"The what now?"

"The wrench," Adrian repeated. "It's that thing next t' you, nope – other side." Jac glanced at the array of equipment by her hip. It all looked the same to her, a mildly terrifying tangle of nameless implements. She picked up the least threatening item. "No, that's just a spanner. It's – th' other thing." What other thing? Could he possibly be less vague? Jac set the spanner down, the corners of her mouth tilting into a faint smile, and picked up something else. "No! Not that one, th' other one!" He sat back on his heels beside the partly disassembled engine, pointing and gesturing vaguely at the pile of tools on the workbench. Most of them half rusted, pitted with age, dents and chips and gouges betraying their mistreatment. Jac must have picked up a dozen heavy implements before she managed to select the one Adrian was after. "Yeah," he praised, a relived sigh slipping out, "that's it."

She had absolutely no intention of remembering what it was she'd just fetched for him. His exasperation had been amusing, and the prospect of winding him up further played on her mind. She could already see how easily it could, and would, turn into a game; he knew damn well she was a quick study, and continually passing him the wrong item would drive him right up the wall. Jac stepped away from her perch and slapped the cold, heavy, metal thing into his waiting palm – blackened and coated in grime.

"Blimey," he remarked. _"That_ were painful."

"Shut up, Adrian."

"You'd make a _terrible_ scrub nurse by the way," he added conversationally, faffing with something on the engine.

"No I wouldn't," she protested, folding her arms across her chest. "I know every surgical tool there is, _and_ what it looks like – this is just…"

"Jus's what?" she got the feeling he was humouring her.

Jac cast a glance across the space, filled with boxes and clutter and parts and tools and mess. She prodded another pile of tools with her foot. "Madness," she decided. "Utter madness."

Adrian snorted. "This," he indicated his chaotic workspace, "is why _I'm_ so good in theatre. Back when I were a lowly mechanic, everyone would call their tools somethin' different – so you had t' know what were needed, not what they was askin' for."

"So you really are a mind reader then?"

"Mind reader?" he queried distractedly, tossing the torque wrench or whatever it was called into his toolbox without even using it. Adrian rose stiffly to his feet, casting his gaze around for something else as he absently wiped his hands on his trouser legs, adding to the multitude of stains already there. His eyes fell on her, an odd expression on his face. It sent a shiver up her spine and caused her heart to begin pounding within her ribcage.

"What's that look for?" she demanded after a few moments under that unfamiliar scrutiny.

"This look?" he smirked, pointing at himself.

"Yes, _that_ look."

"This is my 'I'm gonna kiss ya' face," he explained, still grinning. "It's one you ain't seen, 'cause I've always been hidin' it, so I'll forgive ya this time for not recognisin' it. _Next time_ , however…" Adrian advanced toward her, intentions clear – and honestly Jac wasn't about to complain.

Until she caught sight of his blackened fingers.

"Nu-uh," she shook her head, backing away. "Nope! You're not coming anywhere near me, Fletcher. Not with those hands."

"Oh c'mon!" he protested, reaching out for her. "It's jus' a bit of good clean grease."

"And this is a _new_ jumper! It's white. It'll _never_ wash out!"

"I'll buy you 'nother one."

"You couldn't afford it. Not with your pay-check."

"Which one of us is part of the Board of _Directors_ again?"

Jac rolled her eyes. Prat. "You're still not coming near this jumper with those hands," she warned.

Adrian stared at her, his chest heaving and eyes blazing. Then he shrugged, picking up a rag and wiping his hands with it – although the desired effect of cleaning the muck off was diminished by the fact that the rag was already dirty. Jac watched as he chucked the thing in the direction of his toolbox. Fingers just as black and filthy as they had been before he'd rubbed the oily cloth all over them. He stood facing her with his hands on his hips, gaze unblinkingly. "So take it off."

It took a moment for his words to register. "What?"

"Take. It. Off."

She spluttered. "No! I – just wash your hands!"

"If I go out there," he explained patiently, pointing in the general direction of the house, "one of the kids'll want somethin'. D'you really wanna risk that?"

He had a point.

"Baby, you look hot. Sexy. I fuckin' love this look on you." Jac glanced down at her jeans and jumper, hardly a thrilling combination. "But I need t' touch ya – needed t' since the moment I saw you was here – so please, _take it off."_

"I'm not wearing anything underneath," she confessed.

"Even better."

She was torn – truly torn. Because on one hand she really, _really,_ wanted to kiss him. Wanted him to press her against the old workbench and kiss her as though his life, and hers, depended on it. Wanted to feel his hands on her, the warmth of them against every inch of her skin. On the other … removing her top would reveal her scars. That angry red gash under her ribs and the discoloured incisions down her spine. Startling white lines on her abdomen.

And yes, he knew they were there – had seen the slash in her side when he'd changed her dressings after the shooting. Had said nothing when she'd asked him once or twice (or a few times more) to check the surgical wounds on her back were healing, some undercurrent of doubt over Gaskell's competency nagging at her even then. He knew she'd given her mother a kidney and that she'd had a cyst on an ovary which, until the tests came back clear, had been considered cancerous. Knew that Emma's hadn't been a natural birth.

But it was one thing knowing she had scars, and for him to observe them while they were within a clinical environment, another thing entirely for him to see them now. When he was looking at her in a way that suggested he'd very much like to fuck her against the nearest surface.

"Aid–" She managed to stutter out the first syllable of his name, fingers toying with the hem of her new jumper, before they were interrupted.

" _Daaaad!"_

He swore. "I'm gonna bloody kill 'em."

* * *

Turned out that when Theo hid the TV remote, he'd hidden it so well that he couldn't find it again. Much to Ella and Emma's aggravation. There was a lot of yelling and accusing and heightened emotions when Jac followed Adrian into the room that had once resembled a comfortable living space. Now it just looked like a bomb site. At least Mikey had cleaned the sink Jac reasoned half an hour later, when the remote had finally been found, and flaring tempers settled. She hadn't been sure the kid had known how. He still smelled though.

"Little shite does it on purpose I swear," Adrian grumbled as he joined her in the kitchen.

"Hides the remote?"

Adrian nodded. "I'll put 'em all t' bed. Come down t' watch a bit of footy or catch up on _Game of Thrones_ or somethin', but I'm stuck watching some shitty kides' TV show because fuck knows where he's stashed the thing! So when I go up t' _ask_ him – could ya turn the tap on?" he requested suddenly, interrupting himself. Jac blinked, then stirred into action. "Cheers m' dears – so he just goes 'Oh I don't know daddy! It wasn't me daddy!' and then he has the nerve t' tell me it's his bedtime an' he has t' go t' sleep!"

She watched as he stuck his hands under the tap, still grumbling about his youngest child. It had never really occurred to her, until she'd been watching him in the garage, that he had just as much dexterity with his fingers as she had – that his hands had once been the tool of his trade as much as hers were. Which was odd. She'd known he'd been a mechanic before being a nurse. Knew what it entailed. The number of times she'd been stuck waiting for some twat in greasy overalls to MOT her car had given her a fair idea of what was involved. That and various TV dramas and Hollywood blockbusters. Unfortunately, Adrian's next words didn't help with the direction her thoughts had tumbled in.

"You was gonna take it off," he smirked.

Jac tried to glance away, failing to hide the way her lips twitched in amusement, but it was almost impossible _not_ to look at him. "I don't know what you mean."

He nudged her. "Yeah you do. If Mikey hadn't called me, you'd of taken it off." Adrian reached past her, deliberately holding her gaze as he seized the dishtowel. "An' as much as that thing looks good on ya," he continued conversationally, "bet it'd of looked even better on the floor."

Her lack of response was enough for him to know, instantly, something was wrong. "What?"

She shook her head, shoulders rising and falling. "Nothing."

"Jac … _tell me,"_ he urged, nudging her with his knee as his hands were occupied with the dishtowel. "You jus' gotta tell me. I can't do anythin' if I don't know what I did t' scare ya."

"You haven't," Jac told him quickly, yet unable to meet his gaze. "I just…"

"Jus' what?" he asked, and she could feel him frowning at her. Out the corner of her eye, caught the way he ran an agitated hand through his hair as he set the dishtowel on the worktop.

"Doesn't matter," she murmured, not trying all that hard to shake the moment off. Seeking to avoid whatever turn this conversation had taken. Go join Tweedledum and Tweedledee in the living room as they watched whatever film it was that she could hear filtering through the partially closed doors. But Adrian wasn't having any of it; darting in front of her before she had a chance to even think about slipping away. Trapping her between him and the sink.

Her hands fell onto his shoulders, probably because she'd intended to push him away; somewhere along the way changing her mind. One slid down his chest to feel his heart beating, a steady constant rhythm she could lose herself in, and the other toying with the hair on the back of his neck. His forehead dropped to rest against her temple. There was, Jac knew, a rather easy out dangling tantalisingly before her. All it'd take was something along the lines of 'it doesn't matter Fletch,' and he'd leave her be. And it was tempting, very tempting. She tilted her head back to get a better look at him. He wasn't touching her – hands placed on the worktop either side of her waist – yet he wasn't about to move, or let her go anywhere, either. What a fucking considerate bastard.

"Look," he murmured, "I know you're used t' keepin' it all in. I know it's hard for you t' trust people – an' I know why that is. But you can trust me. Always."

"I know," she whispered. "I do … I'm just not used to it."

He placed a kiss to the top of her head. "Well I want ya t' get used t' it … however long it takes."

Jac's lips twitched into the briefest of smiles as she hesitated. Because, honestly, she wanted to get used to it too. And she knew that if she didn't tell him today then it'd only come up again. Probably during a far less convenient moment. She could picture it now; him naked and rearing to go, and then this hateful doubt springing itself upon her, ruining their entire evening. Ending with a row. In one of them storming out. It was stupid. Because she _didn't_ care about them – not really. She knew he didn't either, knew he had them too.

He'd also been stabbed not long after that helicopter had crashed into the ED.

He'd expressed concern the other day about his dad letting the kids climb the big oak tree in the field behind his garden. Steven had simply, patiently, somewhat smugly, reminded Adrian about how he'd forever been up trees as a young boy. Adrian had then informed his father, rather tersely, that that when he was nine he'd fallen out of a tree, ending up in hospital with concussion, a broken ankle, and several stitches which resulted in the scar he carried to this day. All in all, an experience he did not fancy repeating with any of the kids. He'd also been stabbed not long after that helicopter had crashed into the ED. Required surgery and everything. Nearly lost his ability to walk…

These stupid marks on her body _didn't matter._

"It's just … you know," Jac shrugged, still playing with his hair. "I look like a Picasso painting."

And he knew – immediately knew what she was talking about. Fucking mind reader.

"Them scars mean you lived," Adrian said firmly, pulling away so he could look her in the eye. "They're proof, right? Proof that you're here – an' that Emma's here – an' that you're _alive_. An' baby that's all that matters."

"It really doesn't bother you?"

"Not one single bit. You look…" he gave a little self-conscious laugh then, "you always look perfect. No matter what you're wearin' – or _not_ wearin'." Adrian grinned at her, eyes twinkling. "It's like I said, it's a pretty jumper, baby, but it'd look absolutely _amazin'_ on the floor."

"Oh shut up!" She pushed off from her perch on the counter, pushed at him hard enough that he rocked backward half a step, but he quickly snatched at her waist, pulling her into him before she could make her escape. That challenging, daring glint in his eyes again.

"Make me."

Falling in love with him – falling in love with his kids – wasn't really falling at all, Jac realised as she tugged on the collar of his t-shirt and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. Cool, damp, clean hands crept up her spine beneath her new jumper. Fingers gliding over scarred tissue. It was walking through a door and knowing, for the first time in her entire life, that she was home.

That she was safe.

* * *

A/N : _and so we have reached the end._

 _it's actually so surreal to me that i've finally finished it. the story went way beyond what i'd originally intended it to be, and veered down roads i wasn't sure it should be going at times, but here we are. at the end. hope you all enjoy it and are happy that our idiots have come to their senses (even if they may never do so in cannon...)_

 _until next time ;)_


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